I used to think health care reform was a boring, overly complicated issue. That was until I hit my mid-30s and, suddenly, every time I’d have an ache or pain my doctor would say “you’re getting old.” Amazing what a chronic shooting pain in your knee or ever-deteriorating vision can do to pique your interest in an issue.

Chris, Joe and I have all written before about our ongoing drama with America’s health care system. Chris has written about a good friend’s mom who suffered a stroke, then was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, only to be told that she’d met her lifetime insurance benefit limit – buh bye. And I recently found out that I’d met my annual prescription drug benefits limit – so, sorry, no more prescriptions for me this year.

I spent Saturday trying to find out what my health plan at CareFirst Blue Cross Blue Shield actually covers. And judging by the impossibility of finding the information, you’d think the insurance company might not want you to actually know the details of your plan. CareFirst, for example, has a dandy Web site where you can sign up with your account number and see how much you’ve already spent this year on prescriptions and doctor visits. And that’s great, but kind of useless since they don’t bother saying what my coverage actually is for prescriptions or doctor visits, how much they cover for each visit, nor do they tell you what your annual or lifetime limits are for those benefits. So, I can check the cost of prescription drugs I’ve bought this year, but I can’t check whether I’m close to my annual benefits limit, or whether I even have an annual benefits limit. It’s almost as if they don’t want you to know, and would rather have you be surprised the next time you get sick and really need those antibiotics. Oh, and there is nothing on Blue Cross’ site that I can find that actually details my benefits, even though they know what my plan is. How hard is it to simply put the detailed benefits package online in a downloadable PDF? Oh yeah, there’s a link that claims it details your benefits – it doesn’t. Almost as if they don’t want you to know.

Another thing that’s quite suspicious. Once you get into the guts of Blue Cross’ Web site you find out that you can buy prescription drugs online via Rite-Aid or Walgreen’s, and the drugs are actually cheaper than using Drugstore.com (which is the cheapest reliable service I’ve found). Now, why is it that I have an annual limit on prescription drugs, that Blue Cross has a cheaper way for me to buy those same drugs, but Blue Cross doesn’t affirmatively tell me in an obvious way that the alternative is out there. I had to find out by creating an account on Blue Cross’ site (something that’s relatively worthless), and then by digging around to discover that there are cheaper options than the already-cheap option I’m using. Considering how much the insurance companies gripe about spiraling health care costs, they do next to nothing to help their own customers save money, which in turn saves them money. It’s almost as if there is some perverse incentive they’re not telling us about, some incentive for us to actually SPEND more on our health care, that somehow this benefits them economically. Otherwise, they would tell us that we can buy drugs cheaper via their online buddies. But they don’t.

The entire system is fishy, and inscrutable, as hell. I tried this past March to find out if my Blue Cross plan covers me while traveling abroad. I had a blithering idiot from Blue Cross on the phone for half an hour – I was calling from Paris, mind you – and after half an hour of her searching for a simple answer (am I, or am I not, covered while abroad), she gave me the wrong answer. The woman could not have been a bigger moron, she had no clue what she was doing, she was clearly reading off a computer screen. I learned my lesson, and went to the French doctors anyway, and said to hell with it, I’ll pay whatever it costs to get better. In fact, I paid a grand total of 65 euros (about 80 bucks), for two doctor visits and a chest x-ray. The French thought that was a bit expensive – and, mind you, their health care plan would have picked up most of the 80 bucks. I laughed and paid it out of my pocket, knowing that the doctor visit here in the US would have been a good 65 bucks, easy, and the chest x-ray would have been 200 to 400 dollars, easy.

Our health care system sucks. As the article in today’s Washington Post points out, we do not have the best health care in the world, by far. Ours is actually pretty crappy compared to other western democracies. And that should piss you off. The Republicans have told us for years that “we’re number one!” in an effort to stop us from making the changes and improvements that would actually make us number one. Well we’re not number one in terms of the health care we provide our citizens. We’re far from it. And as each and every one of you passes the magic age of 30 – the age in which everything starts to hurt a little bit more – this fact ought to scare the hell out of you.

PS Speaking of “we’re number one.” Call a dermatologist some time and try to schedule an appointment for any day this century. Just try.

Note from Jacki: Just wanted to add the reminder that we’re working very hard – right now – to do something about our health care system once and for all.

I now work for HCAN – Health Care for America Now – which is a grassroots campaign aiming to be the boots on the ground army that will back up Obama and our allies in Congress when the insurance companies and drug companies and high-paid DC lobbyists come out swinging.

This is the time we can finally (!) make change happen.

Obama signed on to the HCAN principles back on October 6th. It’s not legislation. It’s an outline for what good, comprehensive legislation will look like. If you have a moment, you should check it out. Health care doesn’t have to be complicated, and I promise I will do everything in my power to help you understand the campaign every step of the way.