Reason #538 to leave Obamacare alone (while moving closer to single payer).
Letters of Creditable Coverage.
I've been through the belly of the health insurance beast and it's an ugly trip that nobody should ever be exposed to again. I lost my most recent "good paying job" in 2007 and with it went my affordable health insurance. For a few months I was able to maintain COBRA payments at around $1,350/month, which was a necessity as my wife had a little touch of cancer in 2003 and we didn't want to get screwed on the preexisting condition pitfall (which is a scam to scrub the sick/likely sick from the risk pool).
After 5 months I was nearly broke and landed a (W-2) gig paying slightly less than half of my former wages and offering no benefits. In order to avoid any gap in coverage, I then purchased a series of temporary non-renewable health insurance policies, each of 6-months in duration. Each of these policies were catastrophic-only, high premium policies that had $5,000 deductibles per person (family of 3) and covered no preventative care, medications, etc.
Here's where the fun begins. Every time I had to buy one of these policies, I was required to submit "Letters of Creditable Coverage" from my prior health insurance carriers in order to prove that I had no lapse in coverage, else they'd reject the policy. These letters had to specifically reference myself, my wife and son by name and date of birth as well as to lay out the exact dates of coverage. During this period my wife needed to go to the ER where we stayed for 10-12 hours while she had a number of tests run and racked up a bill of around $5,500, which we're still paying on 4-years later. I was fortunate that I had no prior lapses in coverage as I was able to reap the massive $500 insurance payout. (windfall...whoo hooo...not).
Flash forward to a wedding I attended this past weekend. I've been with a new employer for about 18 months and have decent group healthcare coverage. Some of the guests I was seated with at the reception were railing against Obamacare, so I detailed my plight. They had no idea how tortuous and convoluted our health insurance system had become and all but one (teabagger-type who basically said "tough shit, the chips fall where they fall"
came away with a much better understanding of Obamacare (yep, I proudly called it Obamacare). For me, the turning point in this discussion a moment of inspiration when I challenged them to "Enlighten me as to what value a for-profit health insurance company adds to our nations healthcare system?".
There's hope out there and even those who seem to have been inoculated against facts by Faux Newz can sometimes be reached by logic, reason and open dialog.
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