My health coverage costs are going up (again), due in part to several 'very large claims' filed by other Fremulon employees. Seriously. It gets back to one of my favorite jokes about health insurance, which is that it's great as long as you don't get sick. I wish I were kidding.
Anyway, the problems with the industry, and the system as a whole, are wonderfully articulated in this article, called "How American Health Care Killed My Father", by David Goldhill. The essay summarizes nicely all the different ways in which the current 'health care' system fails the people that use it. In the process, it makes a lot of people a very large amount of money.
The important thing to understand is that you are not the customer in your doctor-patient transaction, and as such, you have no leverage. Another important thing to understand is that people in the business of making money on your transaction will fight bitterly to prevent you from having any choice (e.g. leverage) or transparency in the transaction. The final, and most important thing of all to understand is the position of the 'health care' industry in re: you the patient, which is: go fuck yourself.
The good news is that Obama, et. al. has signed all of America up for a system that is quite obviously broken and will bankrupt the country. So that's fun.
Where from here? Nowhere. As long as some people are making piles of money, what incentive do they have to change the system? The whole thing will have to collapse before we see any change at all, if ever.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/09/how-american-health-care-killed-my-father/7617/
Props to Big Cheese for sending me the original article, and also to Ze Newbs for discussing with me while we were in Barcelona and Sevilla (he had read it separately because he has a subscription or something - he's highbrow like that).
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