An audience of two

Monday February 04, 2008

Healthcare Reform
Last night I watched Michael Moore's movie, Sicko. If you haven't seen it, you should. It takes a fairly critical look at the US healthcare system. Critics would say that it views the so-called "socialized medicine" systems in other countries through particularly rose tinted glasses, and while that's true I don't think it really damages the movie's overall premise: healthcare should be about making people well, not about profit.

Last year was a tough year for us. Everyone in the family spent some time in hospital; Zoe had a couple of days due to dehydration following a particularly oral virus, Alison was pregnant with Jamie, and I had my brain haemorrhage. I decided to take a closer look at how much I'd spent on healthcare.

As far as I can work out, my payments to Blue Shield for insurance alone came to around $15,000. On top of that there was over $2,000 for Medicare. So that's over $17,000 before tax. Insurance covered much of the treatment, but including the various doctor's visits over the year I was out of pocket around $6,000 (after tax). Prescription copayments came to another $600. Grand Total: Around $24,000, and that's not counting the tax.

Coincidentally, My father also got sick this year. In early October he was diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Lukaemia. He's since had three courses of chemotherapy, involving long hospital stays. Total cost to him: $0 because he lives in England.

The good news is that there's a bill in progress called the United States National Health Insurance Act, also known as HR 676 or the Conyers Bill, that stands a good chance of becoming law. Well, as good a chance as any bill could that had the entire weight of the health insurance industry against it. I strongly urge you to read up about it and lobby your representative to support it. (Mine does - thank you, Mike Honda!)

Critics of the systems say things like "You wait in line to see a doctor" and "It costs too much". Well I've been to many doctor's surgeries in the UK and I've rarely had to wait more than an hour or so. When I was a kid the doctor came to me. Whereas in America I've had to wait for an hour in the doctor's surgery several times - even though I had an appointment. And that's assuming you can make an appointment the same day. As for costing too much, by my rough calculations the cost of the National Insurance in the UK is significantly less than the SunFlex benefits.

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