As you know, I’ve been a little out of pocket the past couple of days hanging out at the hospital. Nice to see that things have remained calm in my absence.
My wife had some surgery at a wonderful hospital in Boston with an equally wonderful surgeon. I would give a more specific shout out, but given it’s Boston, probably better that they not get an endorsement from me.
We had to go “out of network” but most of it will be covered from our private insurance which is a run of the mill, standard issue policy available to anyone in the Cornell group. We could have stayed in-network, and it would not have cost us anything, but that was our choice. We live frugally and save for rainy days like this.
We sought out the surgeon specifically for his expertise. He appears to have a thriving private practice, because there was a delay of a few weeks until he had an opening. I hope he is making a fortune, he deserves it. (All went well, by the way.)
We didn’t have to go on a government created waiting list; or worry about whether we met the age or other parameters for the surgery. And there was no shortage of supply. If that surgeon were not available there were plenty of other competent choices. Most of all, we controlled the whole process.
This experience is pretty typical for the many surgeries we have had in the family in the past two decades. Sure we hate it when the insurance companies nickel-and-dime us on some reimbursements, but when it has counted for the big ticket items, it never has been a problem.
As I pointed out as the health care debate raged in 2009 and early 2010, the vast majority of people in this country have health insurance, and the vast majority of those people are satisfied.
If your comeback is that there are many people who do not have such benefits, I agree. So let’s make the current system more accessible, let’s not destroy it.for the rest of us.
Obamacare, with its bureaucratic tentacles reaching deep into every aspect of our health care, is a disaster waiting to happen. We lost round one, now we have to knock it out.:
Update: There are many aspects of Obamacare which are bad, but this recent experience highlights to me the damage from the destruction of the catastrophic insurance market. Since high deductible policies no longer are acceptable under Obamacare, such policies will all but cease to exist. Making low cost, high deductible policies available more easily would prevent the sort of financial disasters which are the worst feature of the current system. Such common sense solutions would have worked far better at reforming the system than Obamacare ever will.
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