Health Insurance and the numbers

[ThomWV]

"Proficiency at billiards speaks of an ill spent youth." I have seen that quote attributed to W.C. Fields, but it may have been someone else.

I used to spend a lot of time in pool halls when I was young but then I didn't for a lot of years and we moved up here, to the fringes of the rustbelt, so when I returned to the hallowed halls of billiards it was in a setting I had not seen before. I had always felt right at home in old style pool halls so they were no stranger to me but it wasn't until I got up here that I ran across a Numbers operation being run out of one.

Back in the day the owner of a local pool hall ran a numbers operation from the pay phone in the place. Certainly not an odd thing in this part of the country. He was just one of many small guys who took in bets and paid out winnings, but he wasn't the money behind the operation. The way it worked, as I understood it, was you put a buck on a 3-digit number and if it hit that day you got paid $500. The number was based on the results of horse races run at different tracks around the nation. As it was explained to me let's say the number 4 horse won the first race at Saratoga, and the number 2 horse won at Hialeah, and the number 6 horse won someplace else, then that day's number would be 426; and that was the way it worked.

Lots of old farts played the numbers and many of them played the same number time after time. My father in law and an uncle on the other side of the family were both like that, they played some number every time and generally placed a bet on payday, once a week. It shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that every few years they would "Hit", and of course that was a day for great merriment. At the same time anyone could figure out that the numbers guys were running a racket at which they could not lose, but the chance of a payout and the certainty that one would come eventually - maybe even tomorrow - kept the racket running. Back in those days the whole thing was mobbed-up, but no one cared.

So I was thinking about Health-care-financing and the insurance we've got. I've had the same health insurance for 25+ years and in all of that time the total they've paid out hasn't been over $10,000, the payin has been close to half a million dollars. Seriously, my wife and I have been remarkably healthy as was our son when he was covered. This hasn't been cheap. The portion of the premium we pay is hundreds of dollars and my previous employer pays much more. Just like my father in law and my uncle I pay periodically and just like them my day will come and there will be a payout. Its just a matter of time.

Now here is the difference between those old numbers rackets and health insurance. When the time comes that my wife or I run up against astronomical medical bills I have no idea how much, if any, of the costs will be covered by my insurance. Even though I have good insurance there is simply no way of knowing what they will allow and what they won't, what portion will be paid and which will not. I just don't know. With the numbers racket it wasn't like that. You put in your money regularly and when your number came up you got paid - you knew exactly how much, you knew exactly where, and you knew exactly when you'd be paid. And there was no question about it. And there we have it, when you compare these two systems, the mobbed-up numbers rackets in the old days and todays health insurance, you realize you were better of dealing with the Mob.