Even though I had read about the coming radical increases in health care insurance premiums, it was still a shock when I finally got my notification. After retiring and moving to an individual plan, we had just adjusted to the three-fold increase in the cost of our insurance. Now, one year later, we're trying to absorb the impact of another 50% increase. The monthly cost is now approaching the mortgage cost of an average home.
My immediate reaction was that of disgust and the feeling that I was being had. How can costs escalate so dramatically from one year to the next. Was my insurer taking me to the cleaners? My experience with satellite television and internet providers might be an indication. So I dug in to do some research and evaluation.
Then I visited my father in the hospital after his surgery to replace a knee that had been completely worn out for some time. It caused me to contemplate my own experiences with health care providers over the last several years, and to observe the services being provided my father and others like him in the Unity Hospital Joint Replacement Center. I started to fill in the right side of balance sheet that had 20% of my monthly budget listed on the left side.
Looking around in the Joint Replacement Center therapy room, I saw eight patients helped into their exercise chairs by four staff therapists. All had new, bionic hips or knees inserted where the natural joint had failed. They were half of the population of 16 currently occupying rooms in the center, all having received their new joints within the last three days. All ages, from mid-life to senior, and in multiple physical conditions - from the very fit to the folks that don't move much. This was just one small hospital in a corner of the Twin Cities.
Not that many years ago these people, including my father, would have been relegated to the fact that they would need to live with pain and reduced mobility for the rest of their lives. With the advances in technology and medication, they can now experience a relatively short period of recovery, followed by the prospect of an active life, or at least maintaining the pride and benefits of self-sufficiency.
Reflecting on my own experience, the advances of medical technology made it possible for me to regain normal health where, a couple of generations ago, I probably would have had to be satisfied with a half-life. Just thinking of all the experiences I've enjoyed since then, and that I expect to enjoy in the future, makes the cost of that care and reconstruction seem trivial. It wouldn't have been trivial at all if I had to pay for them without the benefit of good insurance. That would have downsized my life considerably.
For those of you that have the benefit of an employer supplied insurance program, please recognize the value of that program when you go through that inevitable second guessing about whether you get paid enough for all that you do. And whenever someone suggests that life used to be so much better way back when, just smile and know that the opportunity for better living has never been greater, thanks in large part to all the capabilities and advances made in the medical community. Those advances do not come cheap, and for that we must pay.
Still.... 50%? The equivalent of a mortgage payment? Really?
I just hope those without employer or government subsidized plans can keep up.
My immediate reaction was that of disgust and the feeling that I was being had. How can costs escalate so dramatically from one year to the next. Was my insurer taking me to the cleaners? My experience with satellite television and internet providers might be an indication. So I dug in to do some research and evaluation.
Then I visited my father in the hospital after his surgery to replace a knee that had been completely worn out for some time. It caused me to contemplate my own experiences with health care providers over the last several years, and to observe the services being provided my father and others like him in the Unity Hospital Joint Replacement Center. I started to fill in the right side of balance sheet that had 20% of my monthly budget listed on the left side.
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| A room full of gimps, recovering their mobility |
Not that many years ago these people, including my father, would have been relegated to the fact that they would need to live with pain and reduced mobility for the rest of their lives. With the advances in technology and medication, they can now experience a relatively short period of recovery, followed by the prospect of an active life, or at least maintaining the pride and benefits of self-sufficiency.
Reflecting on my own experience, the advances of medical technology made it possible for me to regain normal health where, a couple of generations ago, I probably would have had to be satisfied with a half-life. Just thinking of all the experiences I've enjoyed since then, and that I expect to enjoy in the future, makes the cost of that care and reconstruction seem trivial. It wouldn't have been trivial at all if I had to pay for them without the benefit of good insurance. That would have downsized my life considerably.
For those of you that have the benefit of an employer supplied insurance program, please recognize the value of that program when you go through that inevitable second guessing about whether you get paid enough for all that you do. And whenever someone suggests that life used to be so much better way back when, just smile and know that the opportunity for better living has never been greater, thanks in large part to all the capabilities and advances made in the medical community. Those advances do not come cheap, and for that we must pay.
Still.... 50%? The equivalent of a mortgage payment? Really?
I just hope those without employer or government subsidized plans can keep up.
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