What my two year old daughter Sonja tells me to do about health care "Reform"

1. Stop eating when you are full.
2. Fruits and veggies taste better than fast food once you start eating.
3. Go outside and run around if you start to get cranky.
4. Get more sleep. And take a nap now and then.
5. Hug people. It makes everyone feel good. Isn’t that the point?
6. Find some friends and laugh with them.
7. Have someone put sunscreen and a hat on you when you go outside.
8. Kentucky Fried Chicken doesn’t taste like chicken, and makes your tummy hurt.
9. Candy is only for when you’ve been REALLY good.
10. You find more food in your mouth when you floss! Ewwww!

Bonus! The doctor is more fun to see before you get sick!

Two days in the hospital is how much!!? I thought I had insurance!

Today I have been battling the great faceless Corporate Insurance Giant.

Here is the story. My Client, let’s call him Billy Bob, starts developing pain, real pain, the bend you over until a grown man cries pain. Now, a regular guy would have taken several hundred Advil chased with a beer. Not this guy, he’s intelligent, and decides to go to the Hospital Emergency Room. However, despite the searing pain, Billy Bob has the foresight to actually make sure the Hospital he goes to is in his Health Insurance Plan’s Network. Luckily, the insurance company website lists the Hospital as being In-Network! He goes to emergency, gets admitted immediately, and after two days of quality medical care, is discharged.

Billy Bob isn’t worried though, because the Hospital was in his network and therefore most bills should be covered or discounted, right? Then the bills start showing up, big bills, multiple bills, bills the size of small SUVs. Billy Bob is stunned, how could it have been so much? Remember when I said Billy Bob was pretty smart? Looking the bills over he discovers something no one usually would; the Hospital was indeed in his network, but many of the doctors (who belong to their own separate doctor networks) working at the Hospital were not! Thus he gets billed super high rates for out of network doctors at an in network hospital! Not just a few out of network doctors mind you, he was in for two whole days and thus he gets billed from multitudes of specialists all billing from their separate networks!

This is why there is so much anger focused on insurance companies. It’s not the level of care he received, it was excellent and he made a full recovery, but rather the coordination of benefits and billing issues that are dumbfounding.

Needless to say we are arguing that all his services should be covered at the less expensive in network coverage level. How will this turn out? My guess is the great Corporate Insurance Giant will throw us a bone on some charges. That would be nice, but it doesn’t solve the problem.

10 years, "just" over 1 TRILLION, only 30 Million more covered....

The first Health Care Reform Bill is now out of the House. What does it do?

1. Creates a new Government Sponsored Health Plan to compete with Private Insurance Plans.
2. Reduces the ranks of the uninsured by 30 Million.
3. Costs "just" over 1 TRILLION dollars over 10 years. (That's the House's own estimate)
4. Increases Taxes on the wealthy and medium-large businesses.
5. Will reduce the amount doctors receive for treating medicare/medicaid Patients.
6. Closes the "donught hole" in the Medicare prescription drug program. (Finally)


So, let's get this straight, it spends 1 TRILLION over 10 years to cover only 30 Million more People? If you do the math that's a terrible deal!

Once again it does not address the most pressing need, which is holding down the expense of medical care in our country. Just because you pay doctors less who see Medicare-Medicaid patients, that does not mean you have reduced the root cause of the expense crisis.

Our terrible wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will look like a trip to the "dollar store" compared with this plan's "Tiffany's" type shopping spree! If Obama wants to leave a lasting legacy, this will end up being the opposite of the reputation he desires.

I really hope our elected leadership takes a deep breath and a step back to consider the ramifications of this Plan before ramming it through like the Stimulus