Don't be fooled, COBRA is only for the affluent. My friend is paying over $1500.00 a month for himself, his wife and ten year old son.

But what happens when your COBRA benefits run out?

Then what?

If you're not employed by one of the few companies still offering health care benefits, you're on your own and God help you.

This is the situation in which many Americans find themselves, my friend is one such frightened citizen.

My friend is a hard-working, tax paying, play-by-the-rules, self-employed American.

Before I go any further, could someone answer this question?

I'd like to know whether Congresspeople who either lose their seats, or retire are entitled to continue receiving their Congressional benefits for an indefinite period of time?

Do they encounter the same situation we do? Do they get 18 months of Congressional COBRA benefits and are they then on their own?

Back to my friend. His COBRA is expiring sometime in September, I told him we need to deal with his impending health insurance catastrophe. Little did I imagine, his choices would be as bad and expensive as they are.

What is even more frightening is that he and I live in New York State which is supposedly one of the better states for obtaining health insurance. We are blessed to have community rating in New York State which essentially means that if you've been continuously insured, a for-profit insurer may not "underwrite" you and "cherry pick" only healthy people to insure. They must insure you, but the costs are prohibitive and the polices awful.

New York State requires the for-profits to insure everyone, even those of us with the dreaded pre-exisiting conditions. But particularly for the self-employed, the options are few, woefully inadequate, and very expensive.

Every year the premiums escalate at an alarming rate and the benefits shrink. You pay alot more for a lot less.

Basically my friend can choose High Deductible junk insurance from one for-profit or another.

Here's some of what we found working with a very excellent broker.

AETNA (Open Access): Can use AETNA doctors or doctors of choice When using your own doctors, you have

$5000/$15,000 deductible

60% coverage up to $10,000, 100% thereafter

Hospitalization

Mental Health – 20 visits

Chiropractic

When using AETNA doctors, you have

$25/$40 Office copay

Preventative Care

Hospitalization - $500 deductible

Mental Health – $40 copay/ 20 visits per year

Chiropractic

Plan includes a $20 generic/$30 brand/$50 drug card w/$200 deductible

*MONTHLY RATES START AT: $714 single / $1,808 family BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD: (NO REFERRALS REQUIRED) When using BCBS DIRECT doctors, you have a

$25/$40 Office copay

Preventative Care

Hospitalization- $500 hospital copay

Mental Health – 20 visits - $40 office copay

Chiropractic Care

Plan includes a $10 generic/$25 brand /$50 non-formulary drug card

MONTHLY RATES START AT: $532 single/ $1,278 family GHI HIGH DEDUCTIBLE PLAN: CATASTROPHIC PROGRAM **HSA When using your own doctors, you have a

$10,000 deductible

80% coverage up to $12,000, 100% thereafter

Preventative care

Hospitalization

Chiropractic

When using GHI-CBP providers, you have

$5,000 deductible

100% coverage thereafter

Preventative care (no deductible required)

Hospitalization

Mental Health

Chiropractic

Plan includes a drug card after deductible:

Generic Drugs: $0 co-pay

Brand Drugs: $20 co-pay

Non-formulary: $40 co-pay

*MONTHLY RATES: $243 single / $620 family HEALTHNET: Can use HEALTHNET doctors or doctors of choice When using your own doctors, you have

$2,000/$4,000 deductible70% coverage up to $10,000/ $20,000, 100% thereafter

Hospitalization

Mental Health – 20 visits

Chiropractic

When using HEALTHNET doctors, you have

$30 Office copay / $50 specialist copay

Preventative Care

Hospitalization - $750 deductible

Mental Health – $50 copay

Chiropractic

Plan includes a $15 generic/$30 brand/$40 drug card

$100 deductible

*MONTHLY RATES START AT: $665 single / $1,440 family

I want to make one final point. I've concluded that post-Bush, the United States will face another immense human tragedy. High Deductible Junk Insurance is sweeping America. For many Americans, junk insurance is all they can afford and the only insurance being sold where they happen to live. I do not believe that it is an overstatement to say that the impact of junk insurance on the health of the American people is going to be devastating.

For example, junk insurance generally requires you and I to think long and hard before we go in for that screening colonoscopy because it's very likely that we're going to be paying for it out-of-pocket. This means, that unless you have some terrible symptoms, you might not get the necessary screening. And once you have the symptoms, it's often too late.

Maybe Dallasdoc or other doctors will read this diary, and explain the devastating impact of junk insurance on the health of the American people.

Returning to the hypothetical $2000-$3000 colonoscopy. The out-of-pocket expense will cause many people to forego the test, this means that those relatively innocuous polyps many people have, will not be removed, and may over time, turn into colon cancer.

This ain't nyceve delivering fear. This is our sad American reality. It's a huge concern in Massachusetts where many are being mandated to purchase garbage High Deductible junk insurance.

If you remember only one point from this diary it should be this: mandating that people buy junk insurance is means by which the political class can proudly proclaim that they have achieved universal coverage. This is a lie. Junk insurance is insurance in name only.

High deductibles a healthcare worry

The newly insured may shun doctors In its attempt to make health insurance premiums affordable, a state board is giving the go-ahead to plans with high deductibles, but that is causing concern that many newly insured people may avoid getting treated when they're sick or may run up onerous debts to pay their medical bills. . . .But, research shows high deductibles deter people from getting needed treatment, including preventive care, and can plunge those without savings into debt. . . .Bonnie Coleman of West Yarmouth bought a plan with a $3,500 deductible two years ago because that was all her employer offered. When Coleman's doctor sent her for a colonoscopy, she came home with a $1,200 bill and a sinking feeling that she would have to avoid other trips to the doctor. Coleman, 53, who makes just under $30,000 a year as a residential counselor at a group home, struggled to pay off the bill over many months, even with some help from the state's free care pool. . . .For patients who are low-income or sick, deductibles can even lead to an increased risk of death, according to the RAND Health Insurance Experiment, a study that randomly assigned 2,000 families to insurance plans with different levels of coverage and followed them for five years. http://www.boston.com/...

A wave of heretofore curable and preventable disease will be another legacy of the Worst. Mafia Don . President. Ever.

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

It's long overdue that the United States join the rest of the industrialized world and recognize that affordable and guaranteed healthcare is a basic right.

Read the rest here:

http://www.ushistory.org/...