Dr Skull and I are now on Medicare and for the most part it is great.
We have Part A, Part B, Part D and Part G. This last is a supplemental insurance that covers the Medicare "gap." Part B and Part G cost us $$ every month, as does Part D, though the part D is like $4/month, so that's not a big deal.
Part B and Part G cost us, together, a total of about $600/month. That's about what I paid for my insurance through the university, and it is indeed more than I really want to pay.
On the other hand, with my university insurance, I paid that much, the university *also* paid that much, and when we saw a doctor, or bought medication, or spent a few days in the hospital, there was always a co-pay and there was always a deductible before insurance started paying anything (deductible of $7000/year in my last years on the job).
Then once insurance *did* start paying, they only paid 80%, and only 80% of some things, not everything. Some things they would not pay for at all. This included my kid's top surgery, for example, and for a very long time, Dr Skull's CPAP or sleep studies. (They did start paying for those after Obamacare passed.)
Medicare costs us that $600/month every month, or $7200/year, but then everything is covered. No deductible. No co-pay. He spent four days in the hospital with cellulitis and now we have a home health nurse coming three times a week to deal with his wound and he's on three different antibiotics and yesterday we had to go to urgent care and the cost to us has been nothing. Not a penny.
In a sane society, this would be how health care would work. There would be a cost, yes, which ideally would be paid through taxes but whatever, let there be a cost. And then the medical system would cover everything.
How does this change our medical experience? We're not afraid to go to the ER, for example. Usually I would have agreeded with Dr Skull that we should "wait and see" with his cellulitus. That's what we did when he had osteomyelitis in his foot. That resulted in a week-long stay and amputation of his toe. This time we had a four day stay, IV antibiotics, and he's healing well, whereas if we had waited, amputation or death by sepsis were possible outcomes.
In the long run, there is less cost to the end user and less cost to the system as well, not to mention a healthier population. This matters for everyone's health and pursuit of happiness, but it also matters for national defense, for example. And for our education system, and for our national prosperity. Sick and frightened people aren't able to be educated, aren't innovative, aren't good soldiers or good scientists or good artists.
Why don't we have this sort of medical system? Well, because the GOP has convinced bigots and the ignorant that if health care is available to everyone at a no cost at point of service, then black people and poor people and "those" people will get medical care, which currently is restricted to people "like us." You know, the way it should be.
That's why conservatives share those horror stories of people having to wait for medical care in Canada or England. Months! Months people have to wait for medical care! Or about doctors being rude to patients in places with nationalized health care.
People shouldn't have to wait for the health care they need or want, that's the moral to all their fables. What they mean, of course, is people like us shouldn't have to wait. Doctors shouldn't speak sharply to people like us. People like us shouldn't have to sit in waiting rooms as if we were people like that.
Those poor people or those brown people or those immigrants, well, that's different. If they have to wait for health care, or do without health care because they can't afford it, they should have been born rich. Or married rich. Whichever.
The reason our medicare experience is so good, by the way, is because we can afford that $600/month. If we could not, if we weren't people like us, if we had only Medicare Part A (the part that is free) things would be very different. After Part B is taken out of our Social Security, we're getting $2771/month, both of us, together. There would be no way we could afford Medicare Part G at $278/month, which covers the gap, on $2771/month, if we didn't have our TIAA pension and my father's money to keep us middle-class.
So great health care system, for people who can afford it.
2 comments:
Cautionary tale: my husband is a few years older than I am so he became eligible for Medicare last December. I took him off my health insurance plan and gave him clear instructions so he could sign up for Medicare, but when it came down to signing on the dotted line, he decided that he rarely uses medical care so he would just sign up for Part A. When I found out, I encouraged him to go back and fix it, but he insisted that he wouldn't need all those other parts. And of course by then it was too late to get him back on my health insurance, so he has gone all this year with essentially no coverage unless he gets admitted to the hospital. So far that has cost us close to $1000, but that also means that he rejected a costly test ordered by a specialist and he is postponing further testing for a potentially serious problem until January...after he signs up for the other parts of Medicare. He took a gamble with his health and it's costing much more than expected, in both money and peace of mind.
We worked with an agent who figured out the best deal for us, and advised us to also get the Part G supplement. Definitely worth it.
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