11/10/2008 10:52:46 PM EST

What Needs to Change First?

posted by Average Jill

A former patient at my job is in a situation that has me both sympathetic to her and angry at the system.

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She went into the hospital to have surgery, caught a tough infection and ended up having to be off of her job for months instead of weeks. Just as she was well enough to return to work, her employer fired her. The employer told her around the second week of October, but they back dated her fire date to September 30th so they would not have to continue her health insurance. She had her health assessment and mammogram during the first week of October, which she will now have to pay for out-of-pocket. (Her health insurance, an HMO & my employer, believed at the time she was covered or they would not have seen or treated her.)
The patient, who is a nurse, applied to a staffing service for a new job but needed a health form filled out proving immunity from certain diseases before they would hire her. Her former employer has those records but would not release them. She went to the local health department to have titers drawn and a PPD test, but was told they no longer provide those services. She paid out of pocket at a private clinic for the tests.
She has been investigating ways to continue her health insurance, but everything has been cost prohibitive. She was told that COBRA would be $500 per month per person, and she opted to insure her teenage son and not herself.
Now that the Democrats have had major wins and will be the party in charge come January, what laws should be proposed to prevent this from happening to other people?
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Poll

What would you change first?
Firing date cannot be before notification of firing date 0%
Employers must continue health coverage for 4 weeks after firing 20%
Better funding of COBRA to lower premiums 40%
Better funding of local health departments to provide more services 0%
Employers must release employee records when the employee asks 0%
All of the above 40%

Votes: 5
Results | Other Polls
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What Needs to Change First? | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
a (none / 0)
this is why health coverage shouldn't be involved with your job.  I don't agree with obama's plan so i think we will continue to see problems like these because employers get too much power over insurance and records.

chris

by chrisandyasemin on 11/10/2008 11:36:58 PM EST

Exactly. (none / 0)

Up to a certain point, it might be cost-effective for an employer to provide health insurance.  But that point at which it is not cost-effective is not very far down the road.  It is more cost-effective for employers to stop insuring you sooner rather than later.

Everything that happened to this woman after that was merely incidental and involved turf battles.

A single-payer universal health care system has none of these problems or complications.  If you have a heartbeat, you get healthcare, period.  The primary cause of inefficiencies arise only when either private enterprise or government tries to control too much of the system.  Striking that delicate balance is important, but as other countries have shown us both by example and by counter-example, when people recognize that the goal of the system is to keep people healthy and to cure disease, that balance is easily found.

And these countries also have shown us that when people are happy with their healthcare system, they are willing to pay for it.  The people of France, for instance, may pay up to 22% of their incomes for their health care, and they are generally happy with their system.  That tax is offset, of course, because they don't have to pay insurance companies, higher prices for other products and services, or excessively high healthcare costs, all of which are the penalties which U.S. consumers bear.

Side Note:  This is why honest and open accounting systems and a good educational system are necessary.  Americans are getting ripped off by the medical care industry.  They just don't know it.


The world is a strange place, but that makes it really fun to watch. -- bfaul

by EveningStarNM on 11/11/2008 01:37:32 AM EST

[ Parent ]
Update on COBRA (none / 0)
Today I helped a different patient who wanted to apply for private health insurance coverage because his COBRA benefits were due to stop on November 30th. Cost of HMO with COBRA? $500 per month. Cost of out-of-pocket HMO coverage with no employer help? $515 per month.

What in the world are we doing with a bureaucratic federal program that only saves people $15 per month?

by Average Jill on 11/11/2008 06:52:12 PM EST

What Needs to Change First? | 3 comments (3 topical, 0 hidden)
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