90 Days Until I Can Get Insurance - A Personal Case For Medicare For All

In 2018 Americans spent $3.65 trillion on medical expenses. That’s an increase of 4.4 % over 2017 according to a report by Axios. Also, from the report under private health insurance, spending per person rose 4.5% between 2017 and 2018, even though the same number of people were enrolled. That’s for one year and it is expected to keep going up (In 2016 it was $3.4 trillion)

In contrast, conservative estimates put the cost of Medicare for all at $3.3 trillion per year… or as they like to exclaim $33 trillion over 10 years!

I don’t know, that looks like a savings of $3.5 trillion a year based on their numbers and it covers everyone. That seems like a deal to me, but it won’t to them… because uh’m socialism, and as we all know socialism is bad. Always bad. Even where it works.

You know what’s not working for me though? The current for-profit medical system we live under in the United States of America. It’s not working for me, or for you, or even for most of these blue-collar Trump-loving guys who think it’s working for them.

Some of the most common complaints I hear about socialized medicine are that the Government will decide what test can be done, what doctors you can go to and what treatments you can receive. All these things are already controlled by the big insurance companies. They outright decide when and what tests they pay for, they make you pay extra for a doctor out of network and god forbid you want a medication that isn’t on their approved list. Somehow this doesn’t occur to them. Somehow, they think they would be giving up their perceived freedoms by having a government take the place of big insurance.

I have always believed we would be better off with a system that covered everyone all the time. I believed this from a distance though. I had an employer who gave us the best insurance and healthcare possible. I could see a doctor free of charge for the littlest boo boo you could imagine and it was awesome. Unlike many of my colleagues, I felt like everyone should have treatment available like this. This is how you should take care of a society. This is what the greatest country on earth should do for its people. But, as they say, all good things must come to an end and right now my family and I are at the opposite end of the spectrum. No insurance and no options. 

Let me start with some background until the end of December in 2018 I worked for an employer with what has to be one of the most generous medical benefits packages anywhere in America. They paid 100% of the cost of not just the employee, but of the employee’s entire family. Pretty mind-boggling. It was basically a $21k raise for everyone from the lowest-paid to the highest. It didn’t stop there though; they had their own fully staffed free clinic in the parking lot of the downtown branch. Once again, 100% free to employees and family. Tell me that was not an amazing thing to have access to?

Unfortunately, at the end of 2018 the company decided to sell the division I worked for another company. They would still pay the employee portion of the insurance, but now we were responsible for our family (I have three kids and a wife, I need my insurance) which came out to about $800 a month. The free clinic, gone! It was a huge and unexpected pay cut even though my salary was technically the same, and it didn’t cover as much but hey, at least we still had some insurance. We adjusted.

My wife sees a doctor for chronic pain, I see one for an inherited condition. We both have maintenance prescriptions as do a couple of our kids. It was a hardship but, as you can imagine, we were glad to have any insurance at all.

Then the layoffs came. I was laid off.

Very suddenly we have no insurance.

I’m a CDL driver. I figure in this economy I’ll find a job really quick. For three months I can’t find anything that can even cover my mortgage payment. I have to borrow to make ends meet, so much so that when I get my severance from the old job (which was nice) it is eaten up pretty quickly. We pretty much all have to stop taking our medications. It feels like we are getting close to the end of our rope here and then suddenly I finally get a job.

I accept a freight delivery job that is only about 10k less a year then what I was making. I need a job and I need to keep a roof over my head. So, I accepted the position. I’ll be eligible for their insurance in three months, and this employer gives no sick days. If you miss a day you have to get a doctor note or be written up and forget being paid a cent for that day.

And this brings us to the entire point of this article. The real reason that Medicare for All (or single-payer system, or socialized medicine or whatever you call it) would really benefit everyone. Something is wrong with my left eye. It’s gotten very blurry recently and nothing I have found over the counter has helped. I get no sick days and I can’t afford a doctor even if I had them. I am a CDL driver out on the roads of this country daily. A CDL driver who can’t see out of his left eye. Think about that.

I'm driving one of these and I can't see in my left eye!

All over this country we let people go to work sick or in dangerous states. Many times they literally have zero options. Go to work sick or don’t get paid. Don’t see a doctor because you can’t afford it. These people are a danger to everyone, not just themselves. 90 days until I can get insurance, and only then if I can afford it.

The Cost of Universal healthcare... it's not what you think.

I'm not a math whiz. Not be a long shot.... feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

Universal healthcare. $3.2 trillion a year. Big ass scary sounding number. Even scarier when they call it $32 Trillion over 10 years.

A trillion has 12 zeroes, so...written out as a big scary number $3.2 Trillion is $3,200,000,000,000

Mind officially boggled.

Okay... pack it in... that's a shit ton of money, no frickin' way we can afford that kind of cash grab.

You know what, just for shits and giggles, lets run some numbers. Big numbers... Im'a use a calculator.

There are approximately 170 million taxpayers... but about 76 million of them wont pay any federal income tax so that leaves about 94 million actually paying taxes.

That looks like this $94,000,000.

Should be a simple matter of dividing $3.2 Trillion by $94 million... but you know what, I feel like adding another .1 trillion, just in case... and I'll subtract 4 million, once again... just in case.

So $3,300,000,000,000/90,000,000 = $36.6K

Jebus! Holy shit, they are right. That is a literal shit ton of money. DAMN! I do hate when conservatives are right. I gotta be missing something here...

Hmmm, my employer paid $24K in premiums for me and my family last year. (I had a great employer by the way, almost no one pays for the employee and the family.) I paid an additional $8k in prescriptions, co-pays and things that were not covered (but I'd assume most have a forth of that), then I also paid about $1500 into Medicare.

Nope... anyway I look at it this shit is more expensive. It would be nice to cover everyone and all but I'll be in the hole about $8k-$10k more. That would seriously suck ass (actually I wouldn't care if I paid more and it covered everyone - righteous indignation and cussing is for illustrative purposes only).

If only we had a progressive tax system in this country.

Wait... we do have a progressive tax system. Awesome, almost forgot.

Okay... so this is going to be hard to explain. The top 10% of earners pay 71% of the taxes collected in this country. This does not mean that that pay 71% income tax, it means they make so much money that even paying a lower tax rate then the rest of us they account for a bigger share of the revenue collected. So don't stress about their burden. They can afford it, I promise.

It would be pretty safe to assume like most of our taxes this would be a progressive tax. It would actually cost most of us a lot less. Even if the middle class portion was 30% of that cost we'd all be seeing savings and everyone would be covered. 

Think about what that means. Right now people without insurance can't afford to get preventative treatment. Some will wait until a problem can't be ignored anymore. Then the go to an emergency room for care. Something that could have been treated or prevented now costs thousands of dollars. That money will never be paid back and that cost gets spread out to the rest of us.

By the way, in 2016 we spent $3.4 Trillion on medical expenses in this country. It was slated to increase in both 2017 and 2018, but I can't find newer figures. If the conservative's number of $3.2 trillion a year hold true that's a saving of $2 trillion per decade. Just sayin'.

We are paying more and getting less right now. It's time for a change. 

Another Healthcare Rant - This time it's personal!

My employer recently sold my part of the company to someone else. I blogged about it back in December but I want to do so again with some fresh thoughts.

This is real to me now. Before the Healthcare problems of this country, while extremely important to me, did not affect me directly. 

Now it is personal to me. Before I rant, let me say I'm not blaming my new employer, I'm blaming a broken for-profit health care system.

My old employer, Pioneer Natural Resources, paid $21k a year and covered my family at no cost to me. None!!! We even had our own clinic. Most American's probably don't even realize how much their employer contributes. I'm going to make a total guess here, but I believe when most people hear about the cost of a single-payer system they are not thinking about the money their employers are already putting into the system.

My new employer only pays for my insurance. I will have to pay in $11,900 a year to make sure my wife and kids have insurance. I'm actually going to be okay, I can handle it... it's not going to be easy, but it is doable.

My coworkers can not. Their compensation is based on a 40hr work week even though they put in 96 hrs a week. Mine is based on salary, I put in 84 a week, but it would be the same no matter what. In 2018 their wife and kids were covered. Every sickness, every broken bone, they had insurance.

In any other industrialized country in the world, this wouldn't happen. The amount paid would be the same (But in America we use healthcare as leverage to tie people to a job). Most middle class and poor people in this country live to their means (in other words their spending comes close to their paycheck), most cant absorb the sudden loss of almost $1000 in income a month.

Some of these guys will have to choose now between bills and coverage. 

Now.... we spent $3.4 Trillion on healthcare as a country in 2016. It went up about 4% 2017 and is expected to be up 5.3% after the final numbers for 2018 (Edit - I have the numbers now, $3.6 Trillion).

Conservatives estimate the cost of universal healthcare at 32 trillion over 10 years. Democrats estimate $2.8 trillion. That's $3.2 trillion a year by the con estimate and covers everyone. 

By any measure that's a savings of 2 trillion over 10 years. 

EDIT: Things have changed since this blog. I have been on Obamacare since May 2020. Read about that experience here.