Job creation from health care and insurance benefits

Today I'm sitting in a hospital, waiting for an appointment for a class. This morning I dropped off my wife, for some surgery. And in between, I have had some blood drawn for an appoitment on Friday, and had lunch.

But it is a lot more than lunch - a nice bright cafe in the Cancer Center.

We're all good for the economy and Anchorage. Wow. We are really providing for the city we live in, and for this hospital, providing for them an economic boost - just by ourselves.

Take my case: I have stage 4 lung cancer, and my insurance company, Aetna lists Providence Hospital in Anchorage as my preferred provider. After my maximum out-of-picket expense is met, as long as I go to this hospital then I won't have to pay anything other than my premium. The copay for prescritpions is relatively small and is not included.

And what expenses do I have? In August alone, I had an MRI of my spine, a CT scan of my abdomen and some kind of nuclear bone test - listing for about $14,000. And Aetna paid Providence in Anchorage. 

The tests were the third round for me this year. And I also took radiation treatments at Alaska Radiology, on the first floor of another Anchorage Hospital, Alaska Regional - and also chemo-therapy at a local pharmacy.

And now my wife gets to bring in her share.

Together we might bring in $60,000 this year. Pretty good for two middle aged folks - just for getting old and sick.

And what does Providence and the other providers use the money for? A big share woule be for the equipment that is bought out of state and shipped in. But most would be to pay variable and fixed costs, for example as in for the staff, doctors and buildings. Local folks build the buildings and staff the offices, so all good there.

So, as someone looking at the end of my life - after paying for insurance around the country for decades: now I'm cashing in those insurance credits in Alaska.

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Health Care opposition revealed to support more not repeal

Doh!! Polling numbers today show what many of the quieter among us knew all along - President Obama and the Democrats didn't use the mandate we gave them and give us the health care overhaul we wanted. Instead they listened to biased and undeniable Fox News, along with bogus 'grassroots' support financed primarily by billionaires who, as an irony to their very supporters, advocate survival of the fittest. Not only would Republicans and Tea Partiers let insurance companies drop the chronically I'll, they offer as alternatives an exchange where the sickest would pool together for insurance. As one friend noted to me, it's like putting everyone whose house burned down into a pool with others who'd had their houses torched. Obviously the distressed would pay and the lucky would not - but what is insurance for if not to pay when unfortunate events occur?

Maybe I'm jaded because I actually studied - and passed - economics. Oh yea, and I've worked globally in banking and finance too. I listen to a few out there who obviously know nothing about how our money and banking system work but are against anything our government will try and do. Some times you just want to slap them but you know it is a result of the decay in our educational system - a product of those poor home schooled kids who learned from their clueless parents, and from those in schools gutted by greedy homeowners and those without the ability to see the benefits of actual wide-spread learning beyond rigid and uncaring dogma.

Maybe too because I'm terminally I'll with cancer. Medical Bills to keep me alive totaled nearly $23,000. Prescription medication averages nearly retail $6,000 per month. And because I was relatively healthy when I contracted my disease, I've already lived longer than I should have statistically, and am faced with maybe 5 years of $200,000 in bills. Who that much besides the billionaires trying to talk the rest of us to drop this health care and give them another tax break.

Or, maybe it is because of my co-editor who lived in a country that spends 6% less of their GNP on medical care, and yet outperforms our 'capitalist' system. You see, my friend on the right above crushed his elbow. We drove to the nearest hospital who surgically repaired it without even asking for anything beyond his name. He could have been from Mars for all they cared. And when he was discharged did they ask for anything? NO! And did they do a good job? Their work was perfect and has never caused any problems in the dozen or so years after inserting screws.


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