Guaranteed Healthcare

There are several healthcare horror stories which should cause Americans across the nation to lose their collective appetites.

Today you'll read about a stranger, tomorrow the collpase of the U.S. healthcare system  will have landed on  you or someone you love. Make no mistake, it's only a matter of time before you, yes, you, will be face-to-face with our wrecked healthcare system.

How's this for catastrophe?  Americans, make that insured Americans forgoing cancer care because of the cost.  Yup, this is what's being reported in USA Today.  You pay for junk insurance. You forgo so many of lifes small pleasure to be able to pony up month after month. You assume if you need it, it will be there for you. Think again.

Study: Many cancer patients forgoing care because of cost

At a time when they're already fighting for their lives, more cancer patients are now struggling to pay for their medicines.

One in eight people with advanced cancer turned down recommended care because of the cost, according to a new analysis from Thomson Reuters, which provides news and business information. Among patients with incomes under $40,000, one in four in advanced stages of the disease refused treatment.

And it's only going to get worse. Much worse.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that employees will see vastly higher out-of-pocket costs as employers attempt, in the face of shrply escaling costs to maintain some semblance of junk insurance. You'll be paying more, lots more.

As companies head into open-enrollment season, when they let employees pick their plans for next year, many firms say they are reluctant to boost health-care premiums too sharply at a time when wages are stagnant. Instead, workers can expect to pay significantly more for such out-of-pocket items as deductibles, co-payments and other fees.

Employees' charges next year are expected to jump 10.1% from 2008, to an average of $1,880, according to a recent projection by Hewitt Associates, a benefits consulting firm. By contrast, health-care premiums are expected to rise 7.8%, after posting double-digit percentage gains in four of the last five years. In 2008, out-of-pocket costs also increased 10.1%.

. . .

Lauralee Schiraga, a nurse from Brewster, Mass., says she was surprised when she was billed $250 last month for a breast biopsy that had been done to check on a suspicious mass. Around the same time, she got another $250 charge, this time for an endoscopy ordered by her doctor after she had digestive problems. She called her health insurer and was told the bills were her co-payments for the out-patient procedures.

So what's a beleaguered American to do?  Well, for starters many Americans are dropping their unaffordable for-profit insurance. It's crunch time and for so many, the choice comes down to food on the table, gas to get to work, or the monthly extortion for the health insurance industry.  So, many simply drop their junk insurance.

Then what happens? We know that the emergency room is where many Americans receive healthcare.  But these uninsured Americans also receive huge bills for utilizing the emergency room as the place to obtain long neglected primary care.

So some are doing the unthinkable and using an assumed name.  You know what I say?  I say, good for them.

There is only one solution to this national outrage and tragedy. Single payer healthcare. Barack Obama knows this. After the election, I hope he will use his enormous landslide victory to move the American people in this direction. And if he doesn't, we'll show him the way.