"You Do Not Have Health Insurance"
Posted by
Loyola
Aug 6 '09, 11:07
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"Right now, it appears that the biggest barrier to health care reform is people who think that it will hurt them. According to a New York Times poll, �69 percent of respondents in the poll said they were concerned that the quality of their own care would decline if the government created a program that covers everyone.� Since most Americans currently have health insurance, they see reform as a poverty program � something that helps poor people and hurts them. If that�s what you think, then this post is for you.
You do not have health insurance. Let me repeat that. You do not have health insurance. (Unless you are over 65, in which case you do have health insurance. I�ll come back to that later.)
If, like most people, your health coverage is through your employer or your spouse�s employer, that is not what you have. At some point in the future, you will get sick and need expensive health care. What are some of the things that could happen between now and then?
* Your company could drop its health plan. According to the U.S. Census Bureau (see Table HIA-1), the percentage of the population covered by employer-based health insurance has fallen every year since 2000, from 64.2% to 59.3%.*
* You could lose your job. I don�t think I need to tell anyone what the unemployment rate is these days.**
* You could voluntarily leave your job, for example because you have to move to take care of an elderly relative.
* You could get divorced from the spouse you depend on for health coverage.
For all of these reasons, you can�t count on your health insurer being there when you need it. That�s not insurance; that�s employer-subsidized health care for the duration of your employment."
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