re: #631 Cato the Elder

Unless he doesn’t.

It depends on the policy, doesn’t it?

I lost my job in the first major wave of layoffs last year. Under my state’s version of COBRA, I get to pay the full premium and keep my old company coverage for up to 18 months.

A few months ago I started to ask the woman who runs the company’s policies (and happens to be the wife of the owner) whether I could keep paying the policy even after the 18 months run out. Because the jobs are not forthcoming in my field right now. Before I could finish she said, “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll cover you until you find something.”

So, big relief and kudos to them for being menschen.

But what happens to people who can’t make the monthly out-of-pocket premiums (they’re unemployed, after all), or whose policies are crappy cherry-pickin’ “we cover you till you get ill” scams, or whose former bosses don’t give a damn? For that matter, would extended coverage la COBRA even be a general option if it hadn’t been written into law over the screeching and yowling of the “we’ve got the best system in the world” types?

And lastly, why in the hell should access to health care be tied to your job in the first place?

I have two thoughts here on health care Cato.
First of all Medicare to get BASIC health insurance and the 20% “gap” medicare doesn’t cover between what Medicare allows and what you have to pay, as well as a supplemental drug policy (it’s not supplemental at all; unless it’s drugs you get in a hospital, its prescription coverage) costs just about as much as COBRA. And historically most folks didn’t have health insurance because medical costs were sufficiently low that most employed folks - even self-employed or farmers - could afford to pay for their medical care. Then came SCIENCE! Science was discovering all sorts of ways to detect and treat all sorts of illnesses - diabetes, breast cancer, prostate cancer, heart attacks, pacemakers etc. etc. Yea for Science!
But all that research and development had to be paid for somehow. Folks were not going to invest literally HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of dollars to develope insulin, chemotherapy(ies - they are different for different types of cancer) pacemakers and etc without getting a return on their investment. Period.
And suddenly, health insurance companies - seeing an untapped market, did some ole fashioned cost-benefit analysis and said “hey we can make a profit here, just the way Life Insurance Companies do through their use of actuarial tables.’
But as science developed more and more diagnostic tools and treatment tools/medications, health insurance companies - again, to continue making profits, had to either dramatically raise premiums or increased deductibles or both.
And suddenly MOST people who don’t make what say Michelle Obama made in the Private Sector couldn’t afford to pay for medical proceedures and tests and what-not out of their own pocket.
So the question is: How do we keep medical research going strong (stronger actually) without someone paying for it?