State:: Texas

Occupation:: Freelance Audio Video Tech

I’m a Veteran who served 7 years in the Army. I got of the service in 1997 and went to flight school. Worked hard to gain experience to get into the airlines. Got furloughed from the first one a week after 911, went to the next and the cost of healthcare for my wife and I was nearly half of my $25,000 a year earnings. Got furloughed from airline number 2 when they went bankrupt. The cobra option was almost twice what it had been. How is it that you get $125 a week for unemployment but the premium for healthcare is $400 a month. Fortunately my wife’s job took care of that till I got on with another airline a couple years later after. But the low eventually forced me out of the airlines and my wife lost her job in a mass corporate downsizing. Now we are both freelancers and for the first time in our lives, have no coverage. This is after having paid thousands of dollars a year for years to make the taker even more able to take.

We recently looked into high deductible plans and were quoted with premiums of $350 a month with a $10,000 deductible. That is what I consider to be prohibitively expensive. I got an idea, everyone stop paying them tomorrow. They’ll be begging for business when the recession finally hits them.

If you make $25,000 a year, pay 12($400) = $4800 bucks a year in health insurance, 12($1,000) =$12,000 in rent, Taxes of $2,400 a year in taxes (half of the cost of insurance coverage if you don’t go to the doctor even one time). 12($200) = $2,400 a year for car insurance so you can get to work, (if you are fortunate enough to have a car and a job), you are left with a grand total of $2,800. Now divide that by 52 and you find that there is only $52 a week to eat. There are a lot of other expenses that haven’t even began to be added. These are just the basic requirements to operate within the modern world. If you can’t meet these, you are out on your butt in a hurry.

If you have a co-pay of $20 for a visit to the doctor, are you going to go to the doctor, or are you going to eat? But remember, you have already paid the medical industry nearly over 20% of your money for the year. And now, you are in a position where you must pay nearly 50% of your last money in order to talk to a Doctor for a few minutes. People, we are all going to die. The idea of healthcare has been around for less than 100 years, and in that time, they have lobbied to take every last dime they can prior to taking your temperature. And if you miss one single payment because you get sick, hurt, downsized, or whatever, your right to health is instantly revoked.

My final point, they have a new thing called HSA (Health Savings Account). But to be eligible for one, you must be enrolled in a high deductible health insurance plan. (Remember, I was offered a great deal at only $350 a month.)

Let me get this straight. In order for me to even begin get a tax break from the government for saving up my own money to pay for doctor bills, I must first pay any money that I could possibly allocate to saving to a health insurance company that won’t cover any of my medical expenses until I pay the first $10,000.

My suggestion. We all stop paying them tomorrow morning. Go to your employer and ask what they are paying for your healthcare. Ask them to put 75% of that into a savings account for when you actually need to see a doctor and invest the other 25% back into the business by giving it to you in stock options or some kind of creative win-win situation. Imagine then, what would happen when more than half the doctors in the country suddenly lost their free ride. Any you’re all still worrying about our tax dollars helping poor people. The medical industry costs you far more than taxes do. And write to your congressman asking why you can’t have a health savings account.