Here’s a little update on my health crisis from a couple of months ago: I’m still paying the price. Not physically, you understand – nothing noticeable in the way of lingering after-effects of my non-COVID illness. No, I mean I’m literally still paying the price of the hospital stay I experienced in April, the week after my birthday. I think I’ve gone over the numbers before on this blog, but let me just frame it in again so that there’s no mistake: the hospital fee – not the surgeon or anesthesiologist, just the hospital – added up to more than $50,000 for four days. The negotiated rate they charged was more like $37,500, but my portion of it was in excess of $5,000. Once again – I have employer provided health insurance … and the direct cost to me was over $5,000.

I am currently garnishing my own wages to cover this massive fee, adhering to a five month payment plan I agreed to with the hospital. Fortunately – and this is important – I am financially able to afford such an arrangement. But this is the best-case scenario in this cockeyed worker’s paradise known as employer-based health care. I have what has been termed a “Cadillac plan”, mostly because my employer pays 80% of my premiums. (Of course, I am also fortunate that I am not a woman and my employer doesn’t impose its religious convictions on my coverage or that of my wife, because apparently that’s a thing.) As I write this, I can imagine people all over Europe and the rest of the industrialized world scratching their heads over this concept of health care “luxury” – one that entails enormous contributions from the person stricken with disease or injury, regardless of their ability to pay.

I spoke about this issue in a couple of episodes of my podcast, Strange Sound, focusing on presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s comments regarding the supposed popularity of employer-based plans. The fact that tens of millions of people have a thing does not mean that thing is popular. A lot of people have foot diseases, for instance. And in times like these, employer-provided health insurance is a lot like a foot disease … it plagues your every step. It’s just a goddamned ridiculous way to distribute health care services, though that very formulation erroneously suggests that that is the goal of our current system. The goal of our system is not to provide people with the medical care they need; the goal is for some people to make a lot of money. The only way you can honestly analyze our healthcare system is by beginning with that realization.

With the COVID-19 pandemic raging through our country, cases on the rise in forty states, we need to seriously reassess this system. And we need to do it quickly.

luv u,

jp