When I found myself between jobs last year, I knew I would go through rough times taking care of my health needs until I found a new employer. Nevertheless, I thought I could handle it, for a while at least.
Today I can only look back in wonder and anger at how naive I was and how ruthless Kaiser Permanente is. I am now paying far more for health care than I thought possible. Meanwhile, the level of services has gone down.
I am not alone.
I left a full-time job in March of 2002. My former company had taken care of my health care needs, through Kaiser. I was receiving decent care, especially during the last few years, when I found a doctor who was both competent and caring. I had dental, vision, and prescription drugs covered, and a reasonable co-pay for doctors’ visits.
Under COBRA, which I subscribed to when I left the job, I continued the same level of coverage, paying a bit more each month. Six months went by. As October loomed, so did a $400 monthly COBRA premium. I had no full-time work yet, so I opted out of COBRA and looked for a Kaiser plan I could afford.
The least expensive left me with no dental, vision or prescription coverage, and a $20 co-pay for doctors’ visits. Nevertheless, at $239 a month it was all I could handle. So I signed on, beginning October 1. I figured if I was careful I could avoid the dentist and the optometrist for a few months until I had a regular job. I began to brush and floss my teeth with a new vigor, and stocked up on carrots.
Imagine my surprise when I received a letter in December telling me my premium would go up to $345 a month on January 1, 2003 – a 44 percent increase.
After enduring a typical HMO runaround I learned that my costs had gone up for two reasons. The first was because I had turned 60 in 2002. At particular ages, Kaiser figures you are a bigger risk and arbitrarily charges you more.
Kaiser‘s minions had neglected to mention this age problem to me when I signed up for their supposed $239 a month plan in September, even though I already was a sexagenarian at the time: my birthday was in July.
It probably slipped their minds.
The second reason was a simple cost-of-living increase or, as I like to think of it, a make-the-customer-pay-for-the-drubbing-we-took-in-the-stock-market increase.
Again, nobody had breathed a word about this in September.
So, there I was, paying more money for less coverage and more or less locked in. I couldn’t realistically think of going elsewhere because I have a pre-existing condition.
Besides, I didn’t really want to leave my current doctor. Finding a trustworthy doctor in today’s health care system has become harder than finding a good auto mechanic, and the customer’s feeling about it is similar: this took me years, you think; I’m not changing.
So I’m stuck until I can find an employer who has a health plan and will hire me full-time.
The situation is perilous financially, and affects all my health care decisions. The annual dental checkup is out; so is the vision exam: I simply can’t afford them. I won’t go to the doctor unless I absolutely have to. I have expunged the phrase "preventive medicine’ from my lexicon unless by preventive you mean don’t get sick. My anxiety level has jumped (I could see a Kaiser shrink, but the co-pay is now $20 a visit; better to bite my nails.)
Ironically, as I look for regular work, I have landed some free-lance jobs that have me interviewing other victims of the health insurance industry. Most of them feel betrayed and jerked around, as I do. Many of them are in far worse straits.
There is little question in my mind that the health care delivery system in California[Related: Five Dangerous Myths About …][Related: Prop 103 Litigation][Related: CA Legislators Records on H…][Related: Five Dangerous Myths About …][Related: Prop 103 Litigation][Related: CA Legislators Records on H…] is putrid and decayed. It is sucking the life out of patients.
Maybe when the state does its job and regulates this, health care will finally serve patients.
