Hoboken Mom Condo Living
Planning the long-term & juggling the everyday

I am sitting here figuring out how to squeeze maximum efficiency out of every dollar that comes into my household, and all that could be overturned in a heartbeat if one of my family members gets sick or has a serious accident. You think real estate transactions are scary? Think about how quickly you would use up your savings and go into foreclosure if you had to pay huge medical bills and were unable to work. The NYTimes recently reported that an estimated three-quarters of people who are pushed into personal bankruptcy by medical problems actually had insurance when they got sick or were injured.

Doctors, hospitals and outpatient facilities are paid per procedure. So why should it be a surprise that our country’s healthcare costs three times as much as Western European countries and has similar outcomes? Plus, most states don’t have liability limits (aka tort reform) so doctors over-refer just to cover their asses.

Every time I read anything about our healthcare system, I cringe because I understand intimately what is going on behind the scenes. It’s incredibly confusing to the average American, but ultimately, it’s about market share. Everyone’s fighting for a piece of the pie and trying to avoid the people who are truly sick and don’t have money. And the HMOs are truly evil. I once wrote a report showing how the HMOs in NY made a profit one year that exactly matched the amount of unreimbursed care provided by NY hospitals. Coincidence? I think not.

Republicans throw healthcare rationing around as some big scary specter, but the simple fact is that we already have healthcare rationing in this country. And it’s not likely to change anytime soon because when an American gets sick, he or she wants to throw everything and the kitchen sink at their illness. And forget about death. A huge part of our healthcare costs go to extending the lives of the elderly. We spend huge amounts of money to achieve another two weeks of life. Meanwhile, children aren’t getting regular doctor visits, diabetes is skyrocketing in the population and nobody wants to touch preventive care with a ten-foot pole (and since we don’t have enough internists to administer said preventive care, it’s a moot point).

All I have to say is I’m damn glad I come from a family of doctors. I should be able to get my kids taken care of, but everybody else is screwed. And just to be safe, we have the most expensive health insurance plan my husband’s employer offers, because the lifetime limits are much higher than the other plans. One premature kid can cost $1MM, no joke. You don’t want to have a situation where you become a charity case midway through a hospital stay.