What little we know

Last week we had a health insurance enrollment meeting at our work. I was taken back by a few things I learned. One thing I learned was that now, instead of basing health insurance costs off of health, they are basing them off of income. I learned that we have an "Obama style" health care plan. Those who make more pay a higher premium for the same coverage as someone who makes less. They explained that the company wasn't picking up the extra cost, just they were charging the employees with higher salaries more for health care. Here are a couple of examples:

Employee + Family	< $35k	$75K-$100k	> $150k
HRA	299.27	369.69	457.71
PPO	353.78	437.03	541.08
EPO	429.15	530.12	656.34

Here are the issues I have with this:

• If can't afford the best health care, get something cheaper, don't just let them pay less.
  
• At the place I work we have many husband's and spouses working together. In most of those cases, one has a job with significantly lower pay. So now instead of the husband carrying the policy, the wife is going to carry it at a significantly reduced rate.
• If you want to talk about what is fair, what about the fact that the guy that is now making $100k had to struggle with paying for health insurance and didn't get a break. How is it fair to now make him pay more, even though he never got a break when he first started out?
  

People have to make decisions everyday on what they can afford and what they can't. If you can't afford the Cadillac of health coverages, you have to make a decision. When does this all stop? When do we start letting poor families pay less for houses? I want the big house too. If you make $40k, the house should cost you $100k... but if you make $100k, lets charge you $150k. What about cars? In some places that is an essential. You can't get around without a decent car. Why not make the rich guy pay $30k for that brand new car so I only have to pay $10k?

If you want to do it with taxes and healthcare, why not extend it to other items?

In the past few weeks I've gotten less and less sympathy for the poor. Their are millions and millions of poor people who manage their money well. But I've seen too many examples of poor people not knowing how to prioritize. Quit buying those cigarettes... you don't need the TV and cable. I think things like that are why I have trouble feeling sorry for the poor. I watched wife swap a few weeks ago and a rich British woman went to live with a family that was pure white trash. The father didn't have but a couple of teeth and refused to work. They lived in the house and were behind on all their bills. They got tattoos as a family and went to concerts weekly(at $80 a pop, 4 people). I was having a hard time feeling sorry for them when the lady cried about not being able to pay the bills. Then, at the end of the show, the "guest" gets to choose how the family spends their money. The British women allocated enough money to pay off current bills + a couple of the upcoming months. She then put money away so both of the children could go to college(as both had expressed interest in it). She also used some so the father could get his teeth fixed and that was about it. As soon as the family learned this, they were very upset and cussing the rich women. They said themselves they wanted the money to get a big screen and new tatoos. To further prove my point that many poor people do not know how to manage money, the mother of the white trash family gave over 50% of the money to "her favorite" of the 3 rich family children. You do not do that. How do you think the other children felt? I really felt for the other children in that family.

If you really can't make it, go look for help. You can find plenty that will help you with essentials. We need to teach these people how to manage the money they have, not just give them more handouts. If they still can't make it, then you "donate" things that are essential.

This may all sound a little harsh, but I'm all for personal responsibilty. I'm obviously using big generalizations, and most of the time those aren't true... I'm just trying to point out some issues I have with that type of system.

I'm all for having cheap healthcare for the poor so more people can be insured. And of course we don't want more people off the health care roles because it will just raise the health care costs for everyone else. But the solution isn't always to charge the rich more.