My last post received unprecedented traffic, thanks mainly to a link from Matt Singer that led to another link from Ezra Klein. I'm gratified to see so many visitors interested in my experiences with Czech healthcare, and the traffic leads me to believe that perhaps people are starting to get fed up with the status quo enough that a mere labeling of some idea as "socialized medicine" will no longer be its death knell.
In the meantime, we can all take comfort in knowing that Senator Conrad Burns has our best healthcare interests at heart in the bill he's co-sponsoring. He just wants to make healthcare coverage affordable, he says. He's just helping small business, right?
Wrong. By taking away the protections that states have set up, Burns and his co-sponsors, Wyoming's Mike Enzi and Nebraska's Ben Nelson, will make health insurance so affordable as to be useless. Remember my post about HSAs? Now imagine stripped-down plans like those writ large across the land. Of course, some insurance is better than no insurance, given the chances of being hit by a bus or stricken by a life-threatening disease, but that doesn't mean it's a good deal. For a woman in her reproductive years, insurance that fails to cover annual gynecological exams, pap smears, mammograms, birth control, and pregnancy services is little more than a tax on her income. Why would I pay premiums for something I'm never going to get to use? Those procedures and prescriptions basically cover my entire spectrum of healthcare needs at this point. In order to be able to keep it that way, I'd like to continue to be able to get a cervical cancer screening when it's recommended and start getting mammograms a few years down the line. I'd like to continue to be able to plan when and if I become pregnant. And I'd like to know that if I choose to have another baby, the delivery and all the attendent costs are going to be covered decently by my health insurance.
I don't think that's too much to ask.
Of course, if Conrad is willing to sacrifice decent health insurance on the alter of unproven "affordability", I would only ask one thing. Conrad, I'll support your bill right after you drop your own taxpayer-provided Cadillac coverage. You can take your 71-year-old butt down to the Medicare office and sign up for your Part D like everyone else. Or better yet, maybe take a job at Wal*Mart and try out their generous plan, after you've worked there for two years and managed to get them to schedule you full-time throughout that entire period. Enjoy.