DMGHuman Cost
A friend and I were talking last night about health insurance, and it's shift away from its original purpose: to spread costs of health care among everyone, so that everyone gets the care they need, and so that serious illness isn't a financial catastrophy. Instead, insurance companies work on an actuarial model, trying to make sure they turn a profit on each individual.
Here's the quote that tied it all together:
We as a society have made a concious decision to pay a human cost for our economy.
There's a great New Yorker article on this, which I encourage you to read.
Gina, a hairdresser in Idaho, whose husband worked as a freight manager at a chain store, had "a peculiar mannerism of keeping her mouth closed even when speaking." It turned out that she hadn't been able to afford dental care for three years, and one of her front teeth was rotting. Daniel, a construction worker, pulled out his bad teeth with pliers. Then, there was Loretta, who worked nights at a university research center in Mississippi, and was missing most of her teeth. "They'll break off after a while, and then you just grab a hold of them, and they work their way out," she explained to Sered and Fernandopulle. "It hurts so bad, because the tooth aches. Then it's a relief just to get it out of there. The hole closes up itself anyway. So it's so much better."
The economics of health care have led us here. The results are undeniable: companies make more money by taking only the "good bets." I'm a prime example: I'm 29, exercise regularly, eat well, have no history of serious illness (though there is a history of cancer in the family), and I work a cushy office job that caries virtually no risk of injury. Yet I was denied health care recently because of my knee injury. To get coverage, I had to be "symptom- and treatment-free for 12 months."
I shudder to think what my situation might be if I didn't have a job that offered benefits, or couldn't afford them.
So, on that note, I'm making national health care a voting issue, and I'm making a dental appointment.