Losing Health Care

One thing struck me today listening to the news on the radio. In the heated political rhetoric that will tsunami us over the next 90 days, please, please, please keep one thing in mind:

No one loses health care in America.

Don’t let anyone saying so in public get away with it.

If you are fired, laid off, your company goes belly up, you don’t “lose health care.” No hospital in the country can turn you away if you show up sick, injured, or in pain.

What they are talking about is losing health care insurance.

Even without insurance, you can still get health care. You just have to pay for it out of pocket. Worse comes to worse, you set up a payment plan to pay off your debt to the hospital that treated you for your emergency. Worst-case scenario, you declare bankruptcy. But you’ve still received health care when you urgently needed it.

Health care insurance is something I deal with here at work. You enroll in a company-sponsored plan and every paycheck you pay the required deduction, whether it’s just for you, you and your spouse, you and your children, or you and your whole family. Generally, the companies I’ve worked at pay for 60% of the premium, and you pay for the difference in your paycheck. Typical family medical plans range nowadays from $1400 to $1600; single plans are usually a third that.

Several times a month I deal with people who lose their health care insurance. When our company terminates an employee, I remove him from the benefit plans he’s on and then I mail him out forms if he wants to enroll in COBRA. COBRA is the government-mandated program to keep your health insurance, but no one goes on it. Know why? Too darn expensive. Instead of paying for 40% of the premium with a job, you now are expected to pay for 102% of the premium with no job.

That, I admit, is an issue that should be addressed.

Medicare is available for the over-65 crowd or those who are disabled. If you are under 26, the government considers you a child and you can stay on your parent’s insurance, if they’re lucky enough to have stayed employed in the Obama Economy. I’ve seen poorer employees turn down our health insurance because they are on state-run plans for low-income families, though I’m not an expert in that end of the field.

But what alternatives do single men or women in their middle-age, or those who are the sole financial support of their families, have when losing a job yet needing health insurance?

That’s what pols are really talking about, in their attack-the-opponent code, and that’s what not too much is being done about.

Just don’t let anyone tell you “They’re” taking away your health care. Cuz that just ain’t so.

What does Hopper think can be done immediately to ease this problem?

1) Get the real unemployment rate down under 5 percent (a good starting point: speak pro-business in speeches, sponsor and pass pro-business legislation)

2) Lower tax rates across the board for all incomes (including the dreaded capital gains tax)

3) Sponsor tort reform legislation in the health care field

4) De-regulate

There! But I warn you: I will not serve. Should thousands upon thousands of you write in “Hopper” on the November 6 ballot, I will not serve as President.

But I might agree to a cabinet position – Reading Czar!