"Health Insurance" does not mean what people think it means

I first want to point out again my commitment to health care for all but point out my growing concern with the conflation of health insurance and health care.

Most folks think that if they have health insurance they're covered if bad medical things happen.  A friend - Tina Lehmann - suggests that we need to think more clearly about what we're buying and what it means.  She suggests we are really buying Sickness Insurance, and says health care is another thing entirely.

I think she's hit the nail on the head.  Too many people believe that health insurance = health care.  Congress certainly seems to hold to this belief.  Perpetuating this myth is a problem.  Yet another article in the New York Times describes the financial ruin of Lawrence Yurdin & his wife when Mr. Yurdin was hospitalized in Texas.   Mr. Yurdin had insurance.  The brochure said it covered up to $150,000 per year. 

Too bad about that small print.

Too bad that state regulations vary widely and insurers are able to drop people when they start to eat into corporate profits.

Too bad about another personal bankruptcy - 50% are due to medical expenses, and three quarters of those people had "health insurance."

Premiums have skyrocketed and employers are passing the costs on to their employees and dressing this pig up as "consumer directed health plans" and the like.  The real meaning translates to 45 million Americans without "health insurance" and another 25 million with "health insurance" they can't really use because of the outrageous out-of-pocket costs.  And the rest of us are one major sickness or medical disaster away from financial ruin.

Too bad that "health reform" seems to mean "everyone has to buy health insurance."  The pilot project in Massachusetts is running into very predictable trouble.

The health care status quo in the US is broken.
We need serious reform.
Making everyone buy health insurance will certainly please the health insurnace industry (and since they donate so much money to Congress we can totally understand why this proposal is most favored in Washington).
I'm just wondering how long it will take for most of America to wake up to see that they're funnelling money into a broken system and getting almost nothing in return.

Real health reform starts with fixing the broken system.

We must join the ranks of all other developed nations in the world and provide health care to all.

Let's buy eveyone Sickness Insurance.

Then let's get everyone health care too.

L. Gordon Moore

Comments

[Insurance Administration Software]

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[Clinton]

I think that there's a key difference between Health Insurance and Health Assurance. The first one is what we get, the second is what we want.