Today's Bitch: Healthcare

People, we've got to do something about this brokeass healthcare system in this country. I just completed our health insurance renewal for my company and it was the same old story: less benefits costing more money. If you are one of those people who think this system does not need reform, you have only been a consumer and not a purchaser of it.

It now costs me upwards of $100,000/ year to provide insurance for only 12 participants. My realtime health insurance costs have increased 72% over 6 years, with increases in deductibles along the way to help mitigate my costs. Pay increases can't keep up to help employees, and revenue increases can't keep up to help me (it may even hurt by demanding more workers who will in turn need insurance). Insurance companies penalize me and my employees based on group history. Seven years ago, my insurance increase was 125% in one year based entirely on ONE EMPLOYEE'S SPOUSE who had terminal cancer. Is that not the very people who need the insurance? Is that not the risk that is taken when providing the coverage? We are not talking about flood insurance for waterheads who build their house on fucking stilts directly in the path of 20 hurricanes a year. We are not talking about life insurance for a skydive instructor, or automobile liability for the blind driver. We are talking about health insurance, and I am sure his wife would have rather not died of the cancer.

Find me another industry where you are IN BUSINESS to take a risk, and then are not only able to reap huge profits if you were correct, but actually implement increases to recoup from this years crop last years losses if you were wrong. It's a goddamn racket. Every health insurance company in America should be brought up on Federal racketeering charges under the RICO act. How does it translate that the death of person from cancer is indicative that another will contract it this year? Death is a one time event folks. My group's statistical odds for cancer cannot be worse from one year to the next, so how has the risk increased for the insurance providers? It has not...it is just a license to print money to maintain profit margins.

Small business owners have been screaming about this for years, but nobody is listening. Mention health care reform in public and you are drawn and quartered as a heretic. There is too much money being made off the backs of businesses and citizens to kill the cash cow just yet. I tell my insurance agent he better start looking for a another line of work because the revolt is coming. Employers will stop offering coverage...the industry is killing it's customer base like no other industry I know.

He agrees.