Today’s Gripe

I think that’s what I’ll rename my blog: Today’s Gripe. Of course, I’m menopausal. Perhaps in a few years I’ll mellow out again.

Since I’ve already overloaded on telemarketing as a gripe subject, (eight, yes eight telemarketer calls today, if you count the one I got at home before I came to work,) I’ll move on to the health insurance gripe.

It really chaps my hide every time I hear a politician stumping for health insurance for every American. Now you may think that’s a nice sentiment but the reality of it is, health insurance is damned expensive. Our small group annual health premium was $72,000 last year for eleven employees and their families. The company pays half, the employees pay half. Our policy renews every July, and I just got the rate increase for the next year. The policy has jumped to $86,000.

We started health insurance as a benefit for our employees in 1998. At that time the total annual premium was $24,000, a managable amount. But a $62,000 increase in six years, I’m telling you, something about this system is truly and utterly insane.

I’ll belabour the point even further. Without health insurance doctors, clinics and hospitals can charge any rate they wish. However if a person has health insurance, co-payment and co-insurance amounts are based on the negotiated price the health plan has with that provider. So if a person thinks, (as some of our employees do), that they would be better off without the insurance and those insurance dollars back in their paychecks, they are wrong, especially if something major goes wrong. We’re damned if we do, and damned if we don’t.

I don’t have an answer about what to do about these escalating costs. All I know is that the claims our group has incurred over the past several years is only a fraction of the money our company paid in to our insurance plan. I have no gripe about the medical community making a profit. Nor do I have a gripe about research and development dollars. My gripe is that somewhere along the line, someone is making a huge chunk of money on the backs of small employers and employees. I want to know who that is, and I want to know what service they are providing that is making health insurance unaffordable for the average American.

Health insurance for every American would be nice, if it were affordable. Unfortunately more and more small employers are going to have to opt out of offering that benefit if prices keep escalating like they are.

End gripe. Time for a humor break.

The second funniest thing I’ve read on the internet in the past few days is here

The funniest is here

CKS/BL tridiot rating: 99.99999