Are you happy with your health insurance coverage?

[keep_it_real]

http://www.cnn.com/
Yes 61% 140527
No 33% 76047
Haven't had to use it 6% 14677

[trueblue2007]

1. NO!!! I have United Healthcare thru AARP

It was the only thing I could find. Got denied 2 times. Have to pay close to $200 a month and coverage is awful. I had a colonoscopy in Jan. I have to pay $685 after the "insurance" covered on top of the $200 premium. Thank goodness hubby gets VA because he is a disabled veteran.

[quiller4]

32. I'd be happy if my premium dropped to $200. It is $350 for a

policy with a $3500 deductible. After I've met the deductible there is an 80/20 split. At least a number of preventive screening procedures are exempt from the deductible.

[crim son]

2. What health insurance coverage?

:shrug:

[dugaresa]

3. I don't know one person who is happy with their coverage

who the hell is voting in that poll?

Most people I know complain about what isn't covered by their coverage, how high their rates are and how it is only getting worse. Those who don't have coverage and are trying can't overcome the high premiums.

[maxsolomon]

4. seems to work ok. so far.

however, if i lose my job (like so many of my co-workers), i'm fucked. this sword-of-damocles feeling is what it means to be an american.

[SPedigrees]

27. You might be fucked even if you keep your job & health insur.

They love to deny claims, you know. Just don't get sick!

[maxsolomon]

31. it paid for surgery last year

and the associated procedures.

but i knew better than to ask it pay for LASEK.

[Go2Peace]

50. We have low expectations, when other countries have no co-pay none of us should be happy with 85%

or 90% coverage.

[Botany]

5. on line poll ... not valid

n/t

[elocs]

29. Right, but how often do you read the "DU this poll" pleas here?

Those online polls are not scientifically valid either.

[Blue_In_AK]

6. I'd be happier with it

if the premiums hadn't gone up $500 a month over the past five years. $800 a month for two healthy adults seems a bit much to me.

[Botany]

8. Don't worry they will drop the payments to nothing when they dump you ...

.... after you or your other really needs the insurance.

[CrispyQ]

15. There was a story posted here a few weeks ago,

about a young man who had a $10k deductible. He was diagnosed with cancer & after paying $9,500 of his deductible, his insurance company dropped him. That should be criminal.

To the OP, I am fortunate that I have not had to test mine. I get a physical once a year & that's it. Still, my last physical with some lab work, cost a total of $780. United paid $156 total (their negotiated rates) & I paid $131. WTF? After paying 20% of my premimums for a year (hubby's employer picks up the rest) the mega-corp paid a lousy $25 more than I did.

[unhappycamper]

7. Well, I was paying $79 a month in 2003/2004.

At the beginning of this year I was paying $454 a month. My insurance is an HMO that I've been with for around 15 years. They're OK but I'm unhappy with the $$$$$.

BTW I pay insure for myself only.


on edit: to correct typo

[spinbaby]

9. I'm happy with my coverage

In fact, I'm working where I am just because this company has good coverage. But I'm very aware that my good coverage gets more expensive every year and that, if I lose this job, I'm screwed.

[fascisthunter]

10. I don't know anyone happy with their health insurance

then again, I don't hang around many who are upper-middleclass, who can afford good healthcare insuarnce. What a bullshit propaganda poll.

[kctim]

11. Yes.

[Klukie]

12. Yes..for now...but every year it costs more and I get less

The question is not so black and white....I see many shades of gray here.

[Skittles]

44. KLUKIE NAILS IT

for a lot of us it's not so much what we have now as what we fear we will not have down the road

[Old and In the Way]

13. Private Health Ins. as a corporate bennie vs Individual Private Health Ins.

Beeeeeeg difference. When I worked in the corporate world, it was fine. Totally transparent to me. Have the Dr's Office submit the billing to my HR Department and that was the end of it. It couldn't be more different with my health insurance that I have today. Submit a claim - be prepared to fight with the company for months.

Corporate health insurance works because (1) they have an entire department devoted to fighting with the insurance company, it's their full-time job. (2) They have the financial/legal assets to make the ins. company pay. (3) They are motivated to do this because they don't want an unhappy workforce.

You're on your own with Individual Health Insurance...and they know it. It's little David without his slingshot up against Goliath with his aresenal of lawyers and claim reps who are financial rewarded by limiting their payout.

I understand why people working for corporations with healthcare bennies are satisfied. It's the rest of us self-employed/small business owners who are taking it on the chin.

[PDJane]

14. Yes, I am.

But I'm one of those folks who has to deal with Socialist medicine, eh?

[Wickerman]

16. I'd rather the question be; "Do you ever bitch about your premiums?"

People may say, reflexively that they like their coverage but EVERYONE thinks they pay too much for insurance. That might seperate the lying corporate enablers from those who are just ignorant.

*Apologies and :hug: to everyone without insurance.

[Justitia]

17. We pay $1200 / mo for COBRA, which we will lose soon. How can we be happy? -eom

[Ms. Toad]

18. Before you lose COBRA, convert under HIPPA

It won't be cheap - but if you are paying that much already you have probably decided health insurance is critical for you.

[Justitia]

21. Yes, it's critical for us, hubby has heart condition. What do you mean convert to HIPPA?

I've never heard of that???

Will we be able to extend coverage?

[Ms. Toad]

33. HIPAA guarantees issue for anyone

with at least 18 months of creditable coverage (basically a standard group health care policy) who is not otherwise eligible for coverage (e.g. you can't get coverage through Medicare, COBRA, or another employer plan). Even if you have had a slight gap (up to 63 days), you are still entitled to coverage even if you have pre-existing conditions (and coverage for your pre-existing conditions cannot be excluded). Once COBRA runs out, you should be able to convert to individual coverage as long as your prior policy was creditable coverage that you had long enough to qualify.

Here is a chart which identifies state by state how each state provides individual policies for HIPAA eligible individuals - the Definitions section below the chart sets out who is eligible for the guarantee issue. http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comparetable.jsp?cat=7&ind=356 That will give you a place to start.

(Edited to add: I used the wrong acronym in the previous post - for some reason I can't keep HIPPA and HIPAA straight :crazy: )

[Justitia]

36. You are a peach - thank you. Yes, it is crazy expensive & basically is catastrophic only, but

we must have that catastrophic coverage for as long as we can afford it.

Thank you for the HIPAA info.

[Ms. Toad]

38. Hope it helps! Since no one in my family is insurable

on the open market, when that law passed I tucked it away and vowed never to be without insurance again even if I had to go without food or shelter - since a gap means I'd have to start over again without any guarantees that anyone would issue me a policy.

It's even more crucial now for my daughter, until health care reform passes, since her bills from this point forward are likely to be $50,000 a year (and more once she needs a transplant, or develops any of the 3-5 cancers she is at greatly increased risk for). Even if she can't personally afford insurance, we'll be buying it for her as long as we can, since she her life literally depends on continuous access to health care.

[Justitia]

41. Wow, sounds like we are in a similar boat. My son just had a transplant 2 wks ago.

He is totally uninsurable for life.

I mentioned my hubby because we will lose his coverage first. However, my son will lose ALL medical coverage in 36 months.

I can't even think what we will do then. His meds start at $4,000 /mo, and that's just the anti-rejection meds. That does not cover all his medical follow-ups for life. He will always be managing his incurable, chronic illness.

I'm trying to do all this one step at a time.
I need the PO for hubby & I by next year, then for my son in 36 months - if not, I don't know what we'll do.

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of transplant she might need? We are on the other side of the tunnel from you.
Despite all this anxiety over healthcare, the transplant has made my son into a new person.
I'm still so emotionally overwhelmed (in a good way!) by the whole experience.

I still haven't really slept very many hours since we first got the call - it's surreal.

:pals:

[Ms. Toad]

45. Congratulations to your son on making it through the tx

(and on there being an organ available). If it's only been two weeks and you're finding time to hang out here he must have handled it fairly well (although I'll probably carry my laptop along for some diversion...) It has to be such a relief to be on the other side of the transplant. Is he still on your health care? (If so, he should also be eligible for HIPAA conversion when he ages out.)

You might also look into SSI or SSD for your son (although post tx he may be too well to qualify ). At least pre-tx, my daughter will eventually be eligible. Some of the drug companies also offer compassionate care medications for people who can't afford them.

My daughter is heading for a liver transplant - the average time (as of about a month ago) from diagnosis to transplant is 18 years. At the time she was diagnosed (last spring) it was 6-12 years - they're not better at treating it, just better diagnosing it earlier. Between now and then, we can expect chronic fatigue (she's already barely - or perhaps not - capable of carrying a full time load at school), declining mental abilities, and lots of ups and downs before her health deteriorates to the point where it is safer to undergo a transplant than it is to continue living with the disease. She's been managing one chronic illness - and uninsurable - since age 3 - this is a second (related) one, with a lifetime to go (we hope a long one).

As far as reform - even if they don't get the private option, the insurance restrictions that are in the house bill should make insurance available at a uniform cost without regard to pre-existing conditions. The private option, theoretically, will make the price lower still by competition, but both insurance companies and the private option will be required to take everyone and not bump up the price because of pre-existing conditions.

Problem is that the current plan doesn't even start the reforms (or private option) until 2013 - and then only for uninsured individuals and micro-employers. My primary foci in my letters to congress & Obama are access to all, premium uniformit - and, most important, that people with chronic illnesses cannot afford to wait until 2013 for some relief.

[Justitia]

48. Thank you, he's doing pretty well, we are cautiously optimistic

He is currently sleeping on my couch, so I have time today to work out my neurosis on the interwebs - LOL.

He is 26, so he hasn't been on our insurance for awhile. He was uninsured when his kidneys failed. It happened fast. He was literally working one day and hospitalized the next - for a month.
His employer did not offer insurance. By the end of that first month, he was on dialysis. Our world turned upside down.

He was diagnosed with an incurable, genetic, auto-immune disease that attacked his kidneys, destroying them. No family history or hint of trouble.

Long story short, the first years were very, very bad. He had 2 strokes, heart failure, temporary blindness, seizures and many, many complications.
We lived at the hospital. He was very, very sick all the time.
He was on dialysis for three years. He was on the nat'l waiting list for 2 yrs before receiving an organ.

On the financial aspects....egads what a nightmare in the beginning. I was so scared. Because he was living on his own, that eventually did make him eligible for temporary Medicaid. After 3 months of irreversible kidney failure, he became eligible for Medicare and has been on that ever since. Medicare paid for his dialysis treatments, surgeries, drugs, etc for the last 3 yrs. Medicare paid for his transplant. He does receive disability because he worked enough quarters, but only $475 /mo, so obviously we maintain all his living expenses. The day the Social Security office approved him for Medicare I broke down and cried in relief.

However, with a successful transplant, he will lose ALL coverage after 36 months. As you know, he needs anti-rejection meds the rest of his life.
And he will need medical monitoring forever too. At some point, the transplant will most likely die and he will begin to reject. Transplanted kidneys don't normally last a lifetime in a young person (esp w/his disease). Then we will start this all over again, but if he doesn't have any healthcare access, we won't know when that happens and he could very well die. It horrifies me.

The transplant center makes you go through loads of classes pre-transplant. One of the first things they tell you is that you will NEVER get private insurance again, you are now uninsurable.
You must understand the ramifications of what that means prior to transplant and commit to do whatever it takes to preserve the kidney or they won't give you one.

We are on COBRA because my husband got laid off 3 months ago.
One day at a time, we'll figure it out somehow. Right now, we have to focus on his recovery.

I look at my son sometimes and I think I would never have the strength to go through all that he has gone through. I think I would curl up and die. What a strange thought isn't it?
As a Mom, it breaks my heart. I can be there for him, take care of him, but I don't think I could survive his illness.

I know you have a tough road ahead of you, take whatever support systems are available to you.
All the very best to you, your daughter and family.

And by all means - please, please, bring on the public option!

:hug:

[Ms. Toad]

51. Best of luck to you and your son.

My daughter's disease is autoimmune, as well. They don't know whether it is genetic or not, since it is rare it hasn't been studied well enough to know. A good portion of the time it returns after transplant, requiring a second (or more) transplant.

The toughest thing for me has been that I haven't really had much chance to be mom through this. First it was the struggle with the doctor to get the right tests ordered to diagnose what I figured out she had by late January (she was diagnosed in March). After that it was the struggle to see how we could salvage the school year with the least amount of damage to her and to her academic record - with a school that doesn't understand the kind of accommodations needed for an illness that creates extreme fatigue and "brain fog." Finally, since there isn't any recognized treatment (aside from transplant), we spent the summer getting her situated in a medical trial that we hope will at least delay a transplant. Now she's back at school, without much time to just sit together with what all this means. Kids should really just not be allowed to get this sick.

As for your son, don't rule out private insurance - even under the current system there are high risk pools/open enrollment that would accept him in some states - The larger insurance companies in Ohio, for example, are required once or twice a year to accept essentially anyone not hospitalized at the time. There are waiting periods on transplant services and procedures (not sure whether that includes anti-rejection drugs or not), but those waiting periods are waived for creditable coverage (the same thing that entitles you to guaranteed issue under HIPAA). Medicare should qualify as creditable coverage. At age 19, it would cost $14,000 a year to enroll my daughter - not sure if 26 is in the same range or not. The premiums are age based - so it goes up from there.

Also, even if the public option doesn't pass, the rest of the changes in the house bill (and the others are similar) would require any new health insurance policy issued beginning in 2013 to be available without regard to pre-existing conditions, to cover pre-existing conditions, to have the same premium for everyone of the same age in the same geographic region, and to have no maximum lifetime caps. I am terrified that we will throw out the baby with the bath water and refuse to accept insurance reform unless the reform also include a public option - then we will be stuck with what we have now and our kids will still be without access to health care, unless we have the money to pay for everything out of pocket.

I'm all for a public option - and single payer would be even better - but at a bare minimum, we've got to get insurance reform through (and implemented sooner than 2013) or it will be another decade or more before anyone gets the nerve to try again.

[Hekate]

23. While waiting in line for our HC town hall I met a couple on COBRA. He has hemophilia. It's nuts...

The system here is rigged. It's nuts, it's inhumane, it's cruel.

Yet there was a woman sitting next to me with a printout of prepared questions starting with "What's the RUSH?" and then she was pissed off because anyone who wanted to ask a question had to write it on a card and hand it up. The stupid burned brightly in that one.

Hekate

[peace frog]

19. Kinda sorta OK with it

I have a PPO through my employer and although I pay no premium for myself, if I covered my spouse and child it would pretty expensive. No problems with coverage yet but then I have no serious chronic illness. Spouse covers himself and child (premiums are relatively high for an employer-offered plan), but the coverage is much better and his prescription co-pays are much lower than mine.

[Zywiec]

20. Yes, our coverage is great. n/t

[Hekate]

22. Complicated question has been dumbed down...

Am I happy that I have health care coverage? Of course. Am I aware that it depends solely on my husband's employment? Yes. Am I aware that both of us are too old to be desirable new-hires if he and I had to seek new employment? Christ yes. Am I aware that we are both uninsurable if we had to seek private insurance? What do you think?

How can anyone in this country with a functioning brain not see that this affects them as well? How?

Hekate

[pinto]

25. Agree. A simplistic question. I'd have to answer yes, because I'm on Medicare. Yet I realize

it's not available to many Americans who are under-insured or uninsured.

[Liberal In Texas]

37. I feel the same. I'm happy that I have it, but it has yet to be tested

with one of us having a severe illness. And that is frightening.

[RobinA]

24. Yes, I Am Happy

with my coverage. I have employer coverage that is decent. Previously I had individual coverage, which was the standard 80/20. It was $415 a month, but it was cheaper than a hospital bill. Never had a coverage problem, but then, I don't have any real medical problems. My friend's husband has had cancer for the past three years, has had astronomical medical bills and it has been covered. This is not to say that I don't think insurance companies are the lowest form of rat-fink around.

Until real reform comes, I do think people need to be more aware of the potholes of health insurance and organize their lives accordingly. I know an awful lot of people who seem to think it will be there when they need it and do things like let it lapse to pay for other things. To me, health insurance should be one step below food on the priority list. And yes, I know there are many legitimate health insurance horror stories and people who downright can't afford their medication, or the insurance. I'm not talking about those people.

[JackDragna]

26. I'm very happy with it..

..but I'm also a very lucky person. I am pained to see so many without and so many with inadequate coverage. Universal coverage or bust.

[dtotire]

28. Yes--I have FEHBP

Federal Employee's Health Benefit Plan

I have several plans I can choose from.

[elocs]

30. I have BadgerCare Plus from the state of WI for income eligible residents.

I had to pay $60 to join in June and a couple of weeks ago I had a physical exam with my doctor of a good number of years which may cost me $50. Last week I had a mole removed by my doctor and that will probably cost another $15. All in all I am satisfied, but you have to be poor to get BadgerCare Plus. Although I must say that I am content with being poor as well because it makes for a very simple life and I like simple.

[demodonkey]

34. I guess not. I DON'T HAVE ANY. nt

[MoonRiver]

35. I am happy, but I've been healthy.

Don't know what it would be like if I or my husband had a life threatening illness. Don't want to find out either.

[Thothmes]

39. Satisfied with mine. Military retiree, Tricare Prime

has met all of my families medical requirements for the last 15 years. Also have a suplimental policy, but have only had to use it once.

[mmonk]

40. No public option, no vote.

Clear?

[CTyankee]

42. ONLY because we have union negotiated insurance!

And that will stop when hubby reaches 70, one year from now. Then we have Medicare and whatever else we can afford.

WE've had GREAT health insurance because AFSME fought like hell for union members, such as my husband.

[tammywammy]

43. Yes, I'm happy with mine

I've had different versions of Aetna since I was a kid. They've never denied any coverage, including MRIs, physical therapy, etc.

As for my particular policy I'm now on with Aetna, again, I've had no problems with it.

[AnnieBW]

46. Not particularly

I have United Health Care. They took over my really good PPO, MDIPA, two years ago. The one time that I had to use them when I was out of state, it wasn't accepted and I had to pay out of pocket. Fortunately, it was just $150 for an exam to tell me that yes, I really did have a sinus infection and here's a prescription (which was covered).

Besides, I'm disgusted with their tactics against HCR. I don't want my premiums paying for this nonsense. So, we're probably going to switch to something else this Open Season. (I'm a Fed) Probably go back to Blue Cross, although they're not much better.

[yawnmaster]

47. I'm very happy with mine. eom

[jannyk]

49. Where's the 'Afraid to Use It' option? nt

[NoUsername]

52. Actually, I have to say I'm very happy with my health care.

I don't mean that as a slight to those that have crappy health insurance and I by no means state this to minimize their plight. I fully realize I'm one of the lucky ones. I pay roughly $60 per month (employer pays the rest), $10 co-pay for doctor visits, $8 for prescriptions. Preventive medicine is free (yearly physical, yearly mammogram, etc.). My coverage is through a non-profit HMO, the key phrase there being non-profit. They are excellent and I have never been turned down for anything. I have always said they should be a model for a national health-care plan. While I'm VERY happy with my health care, I'm NOT happy that everyone doesn't have the same exact health care that I do. EVERYONE should have this type of access to health care. No exceptions. Take the profit out of health care and it's possible. Apparently that's not something that's going to happen in this country. As always, follow the money.