Don't Forget to add Between $7,000 and $9,500 to What Your Annual Health Insurance Premium is, and Four Ways to Escape

The following was in response to this article, one of the best of the late fall regarding the failure of the US Congress to reform health care in a truly lasting, beneficial way.

FINALLY, someone in a CD article notes that premiums are not the only expense associated with US health care. Unless you want your health insurance to be a never used novelty piece, when you actually seek the actual health care, you will have to pay co-pays that will easily and quickly add up to the $5,000 per year maximum that is in the house bill. Watch out for that to end up being as much as $7,000 per year in the final bill out of conference.

And I guess you can deduce from this article that you should immediately add $1,500 per year to whatever your annual premium is, because you will have to pay that as a deductible every time you first seek health care in a new year. Watch out for that to end up being about $2,000 out of conference. Add whatever your medicines cost (not covered by your health insurance); I'll use $500 for them but I would think could be anything from nothing to $10,000 for medicines.

So to determine your grand total US health tab, add $7,000 to $9,500 per year to whatever your premium is unless your health insurance is just to be a worthless novelty piece.

If this insanity passes there will be millions of fools patting themselves on the back for complying with their right wing government and having health insurance through the exchange or whatever, but with no intention or financial wherewithal of actually seeking health care unless they get hit by a bus or something, in which case they will end up filing for bankruptcy just the same as they would have in the old system.

As I have said before, this is simply rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. We are still going down, because systems with holes in them in go down the same way ships do.

How can you avoid becoming a slave to the multimillionaire health plantation owners (um, I mean the health insurance execs)?

--Your income is less than about 133% of the federal poverty line.

--You are in a religion that forswears health care. Start looking for one now; they should be free to join, and maybe you can participate on the internet and never have to physically go to a service (that may not be located in your area). Note that simply being in such a religion does not legally prevent you from getting health care in an emergency where you decide you really need it and want it.

--Move out of the US. Let's face it, with zero jobs created in more than a decade now, and now with the advent of forced purchases of private products, what is the point of living in the US anymore, unless you are old and stuck in your ways?, laugh out loud).

Yes, I know all too well this is far easier said than done. For example, Canada will in most cases catch you, arrest you and throw you out of the country for posing as a Canadian to try to get a Canadian job. You need a multi-year plan, or else you need a destination country that really, really wants new residents.

--Live in or move to a state that fights back by making the Health Insurance Deform partly illegal. There are moves afoot in about a dozen states to make it state law that no resident shall be forced to buy health insurance, and that no resident shall be forbidden from paying cash for health services. More states will join this movement assuming a small number of states blaze the trail by actually passing new legislation.

At the moment there are a lot of know-it-all types claiming these state laws will not be changing much of anything, but that's what they always say, and there are times, especially when the issues involved are quite large, where state laws do change the effect of federal law. On the other hand, nothing has actually passed in any state yet, so obviously this is at the moment just a potential future relief from the burdens of the mandate.

Also, you would be depending on Republicans to bring this relief about, which is not exactly a comforting thought. Maybe it's just me, but the Republicans always seem to become incompetent at exercising power just when you have that rare occasion when you want them to do something that will work in your favor. Whereas they roll over all opposition and get everything they want when it comes to things that will hurt the common people.

Anyhow, here are the preliminary developments in the states:

http://www.ncsl.org/?tabid=18906

Of the four ways to avoid the mandate, the first two would seem to be overall the most promising at the moment, although which way is the best will vary from person to person.