We can't wait for REAL health care reform

We got an e-mail at work that our health insurance premiums are going up over 9% and our deductible is going up to $2500, this, despite wellness efforts on the part of my employer to try to get our staff healthier. The biggest problems seems to be that when people get sick, they really get sick with catastrophic and expensive illnesses. We've had an alarming number of people in my department alone get cancer. Fully a third of our staff has gotten it in the past 5 years and although my doctor assures me that such a statistic is nothing to be alarmed about - he says that on average, one in three people will get cancer in their lifetimes - still, it is something that scares me. And just the statistic that one in three people will get cancer in and of itself really bothers me. One in three. I mean, that seems an outrageously high proportion of people that will get cancer. And the cancers that people get are rarer and harder to treat varieties, leading to more expensive treatments and higher rates of early mortality. I read the obits in the Akron paper all the time and I see a frightening number of people within 5-10 of my age range, plus or minus, dying of cancer. Now, I tell myself, the greater Akron area has had a long industrial history and it's entirely likely that these were people who were exposed to toxic chemicals either in contaminated groundwater, soil, air or via the clothing that their relatives wore to work. I looked up cancer mortality rates for various counties in Ohio on the Ohio Department of Health web site and naturally, heavily industrialized counties had, on average, far higher rates of cancer death than non-industrialized counties. Well, no big surprise there, I suppose.

But aside from the steep climb in our insurance rates and deductibles, one thing that I found out was that our insurance premiums have gone up 42% in the past 8 years! Forty two percent! That means that our premiums have almost doubled and our coverage has drastically decreased in that time period as well. Were I the head honcho at work, I would be alarmed by those statistics and I would want to know why the sharp rise in the cost of our premiums. I can speculate that a good part of it is our rapidly aging workforce. Look around at work and you see a lot of, well....the women color their hair, but they are not young women by a longshot. Most of us at work are in the 45-55 age range, with a few exceptions, of course. With age comes more demand for medical care as our bodies get creaky and arthritic. We're a high maintenance workforce, to say the least. We've probably been filing more medical claims for more expensive things that are needed as we grow older. With an aging population more prone to catastrophic illnesses, the insurance company is probably looking at us as actuarial statistics rather than people just trying to take good care of themselves. I wouldn't mind paying higher premiums if it meant more coverage, but to pay more for less seems somehow immoral.

I wish I knew how and why things changed from the type of insurance we used to have that covered everything. Somewhere along the line, we got this whole "managed care" thing thrown at us as a solution to health care reform. It was supposed to cut wasteful spending by cutting out what were thought to be unnecessary tests and surgeries and thus cut health care costs. Instead, it seems to have failed to accomplish that goal and as a result, costs have skyrocketed because managed care leaves more people out of the pool and thus at the mercy of their health, raising costs because those folks end up going to the emergency room so they can get primary care, which we, the insured, end up having to foot the bill for since ER care is so expensive. Somehow, something's got to give, and soon, because the alleged health care reform bill that recently passed through Congress will do nothing to help the lion's share of us who are already insured through our employers. We're still going to be stuck with the same high co-pay, high deductible plans we've always had and we cannot afford to get sick or injured. I have a feeling that by the time I retire in three years, the retiree health care plan will be just as bad, if not worse, than what I have now, more than likely forcing me to go back to work full time to seek employment with health benefits. I hope that I am wrong, but at the rate things are going right now, I am not optimistic that what we've been handed in the way of health care reform will trickle down to help average folks like me to catch a break on our health care bills.