So I’m sitting in my neighborhood cafe, having a conversation with this lady about nursing. She’s doing the same thing Monica’s doing: trying to change careers and become a nurse, and taking the pre-requisite classes necessary to get into nursing school.
Anyway, the conversation moved to insurance. I’ve been dealing with getting me and Monica health insurance, and guess what: it fucking sucks. For $160 a month I can get a policy with Blue Cross with a 10k deductible. Which means, in effect, that if either of us gets sick we still can’t go to the doctor unless we pay out of pocket. The $160 a month is to prevent my parents from having to sell their house if one of us gets cancer. Or, alternately, to keep you guys from having to pay for my treatment in your property taxes.
That seems pretty bad for me, since I have no income and $160 a month is a lot. But Jenny’s situation is even worse: she has a few kids, so it’s costing her family $500-something for the same insurance with the same 10k deductible. In other words, $500 a month to receive no services except in the case of total catastrophe.
This is what economists call a “moral hazard.” Why the fuck are Jenny and I paying for this insurance? In my case I’m doing it to protect my family. Maybe Jenny’s doing the same. Maybe we’re doing it because it seems like The Right Thing To Do, but my belief in The Right Thing is getting increasingly tenuous. The insurance I can afford is prohibitively expensive and gives me nothing in my day to day life. Since the cost of defaulting is so low (hospital won’t turn me away if something really disastrous happens) there’s precious little reason to have insurance. If I didn’t have to protect my folks, I probably wouldn’t bother.
And a lot of people _don’t_ bother. Can you really blame them? It’s like buying snacks for a party you can’t afford to attend. As more and more people stop buying the snacks, the parties get worse and worse. This is retarded. And it’s retarded that so many people are so poorly served, and yet making any change is a non-starter. Engh.