I linked to “Gladwell’s piece on health insurance & moral hazard”:http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050829fa_fact through my delicious list yesterday, and today I got around to reading it all.
I may have mentioned here before that we got married so C could get on my dental insurance. (in response to a question I got years ago from a baffled colleague: we live together because we love each other; we got married for “the man.”)
Honestly, I think the moral-hazard argument is a sin. And I’m not even religious.
Most of the last 8 years, I’ve been with Group Health, but last year (2004) we switched to another plan, because the monthly was way cheaper. For the first time I had an annual deductible to deal with. I can say for certain that it changed how I dealt with health care. I honestly think it may have taken me longer to deal with the headaches I had that winter/spring than it might’ve otherwise, because the money question was different.
And I was in pain. Luckily, it didn’t turn out to be anything very serious, mostly just muscle tension. On the flip side, that means I was suffering with headaches…and being less productive…because I didn’t want to spend the money.
Again, we got married so C could get his wisdom teeth removed. What the hell kind of country do we live in where that can happen? He hadn’t been to the dentist in years, either. I didn’t go myself from the time I left home (my last appointment: followup from wisdom teeth removal!) until I got my first job that offered insurance. Again, I was lucky; my teeth were in good shape.
All in all, the time I was uninsured wasn’t very long: about a year, all told. But in that year, I mashed my big toe and had a UTI, both of which went longer than they should’ve before getting treatment. I’m realizing, I think with new force, that I’m actually doing pretty well, financially, even if it all seems more precarious than I’d like.
But that doesn’t reduce my sense of outrage.
Thanks for linking to this story. I, too, married for insurance. My wife and I had been living together happily, engaged but with no definite plans for an actual wedding, for several years when I lost my job back in 2001. COBRA benefits last 18 months (only the first six are subsidized); within 16 months, we were married, and I was on her health plan. Good thing, too, because I get virtually no benefits in my current job.
I have to stop reading, I think. Everything I read these days increases my despair that anything will ever work well, or that anyone who isn’t wealthy and well-connected has a hope in hell of even breaking even, let alone getting ahead. Hurricane Katrina, Iraq, moral hazard, offshoring, the whole world just feels like it’s stacked against the average person and getting worse and worse. I just have to stop.
I hear that. It takes everything I can muster to avoid feeling totally crushed.