Guaranteed Healthcare

I was laid off my job and had COBRA for 18 months, then I had no insurance. I signed up to be a Realtor so that I could get Anthem/Blue Cross under their group plan without a health exam and pre-existing conditions exclusions. I PAY $949.00 per month with a $500 deductible, a $30 co-pay and 30% of all other medical costs. That is outrageous. And I am lucky to have anything at age 56 with high blood pressure.

It costs me over $12,000 a year to have minimal health insurance, which I can ill afford as a Realtor in this real estate market. The insurance company denied an operation my doctor said I needed and I agreed was the right thing for me. My insurance company refused to cover the surgery and steered me to another surgery which was not medically the best for me saying that the surgery my physician chose was 'experimental' even though thousands of people have had it and it has been available for 6 years to others.

Before I was laid off my job, I was already enrolled in one of these high deductible plans in which shifted much more of the cost to me. You know nothing of this with your public health care, single payer health plan. You have single payer. Why can't I? We need single payer. It is the only plan that can pay for itself and removes profit from health care decisions. Wall Street does not belong between people and their health care and that is how the show is run now.

I don't have $4,000,000 (that's $4 million dollars each) to lobby you which is what several individual companies have been spending for the past six months. Health care Insurance company CEOs make $225,000 PER DAY. They have reduced cost of claims from 95% to 80% which Wall Street drives and punishes them if they don't keep driving up profits and driving down providing care.

My brother is a small business owner and he keeps having to shift more costs to his employees for health coverage. This means they opt out which puts more cost pressure on those who want coverage. He welcomes a single payer plan. This would allow him to compete with all those other countries who have single payer health care systems and don't have to factor health care costs into their product cost. He had to switch away from Kaiser, which had a $75 co-pay because it was TOO EXPENSIVE for coverage. This high of a co-pay discourages people from getting the care they need early when it can do the most good. They now have even worse coverage.