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http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-insure9nov09,0,755599,print.story One of the state's largest health insurers set goals and paid bonuses based in part on how many individual policyholders were dropped and how much money was saved.
Woodland Hills-based Health Net Inc. avoided paying $35.5 million in medical expenses by rescinding about 1,600 policies between 2000 and 2006. During that period, it paid its senior analyst in charge of cancellations more than $20,000 in bonuses based in part on her meeting or exceeding annual targets for revoking policies, documents disclosed Thursday showed. Tags: ethics, health, politics, things that piss me off
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http://junkfoodscience.blogspot.com/2007/07/uninsured-making-diagnosis.htmlToday's junkfoodscience post discusses how many people in the US are uninsured and argues that the number is lower than commonly reported. Furthermore, it argues that many of the people who are uninsured can afford to buy insurance but do not. According to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau report “Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States, 2005” issued on August 2006: Of the 46.6 million Americans they cited as uninsured in 2005, 17.04 million without health insurance live in households making more than $50,000 a year. That’s 37% of the uninsured in the U.S. Nearly 9 million of those make more than $75,000.
In fact, according to the Census Bureau, the biggest increases in uninsured by household incomes over the past decade has been among those making the most money. The sentence below immediately follows the previous one, subtly giving the impression that the Census Bureau has made this determination of why the people involved are not insured. I'm not an expert on the Census Bureau but it seems pretty likely to me that this is Swarcz's own theory: They are people who generally have access to and can afford insurance, but prefer to self-insure for whatever reason, perhaps to keep their healthcare decisions out of the hands of their employer or government. I'm sure some of them are, but all? I don't think so. She uses the same trick later on (I've italicized the part that I believe is her theory and not a Census Bureau pronouncement): According to the Census Bureau, more than 18 million of the uninsured are people between the ages of 18 and 34, for whom health insurance isn’t a priority and they’ve chosen, wisely or not, to spend their disposable income on other things. I know some people who don't have health insurance even though they can afford and get it. And insofar as Swarcz is warning against too-invasive and too-restrictive government programs, I agree—I think there should be a guaranteed right to access health care, but I don't think people should be forced into accessing it in particular ways. But I'm very disappointed that a blog which covers the systemic discrimination against fat people so carefully most of the time doesn't even mention the fact that many fat people in the United States are denied insurance even if they can afford it. Swarcz does mention existing government programs providing insurance to people who can't afford it. There are also some government programs for high-risk groups—I looked into the California one a few times when my insurance was about to go away and I was unable to find any insurance companies willing to sell me health insurance. The last I checked, the California program had a months-long waiting list and the lifetime payout maximum was too low to cover any really serious medical condition. ETA: After I wrote this post, Swarcz added some text to her post addressing the issue of people who are denied coverage at any price.Tags: health, opinionated rants, politics
feeling:  irritated
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If you're maybe noticing that you're older than you used to be, and are feeling sad/angry/confused/worried/frustrated that you haven't accomplished as much as you/other people in your present or past/annoyingly critical voices inside your head think you should have, and if you're maybe feeling something like "I'm not a real grownup like everyone else," and if you're maybe also feeling sad/angry/confused/worried/frustrated that your body isn't working the way it used to, and you're maybe thinking, "if that's true then how am I going to DO all those accomplishments that I/other people/voices in my head think I ought or want to do?", and maybe you're also wondering how are you going to dig out from under the accumulation of habit and procrastination and self-doubt to some sense of satisfaction in your life again, then post this same sentence in your journal. Friends keep saying stuff like that where I can see it, and I've been feeling it for a while now too. One said it really well in a friends-locked post: It's been hard for the last some-odd months, with my age catching up to me, not to feel that I've been a continual failure in school, work, and my personal life. ...
I've been trying so hard to hide from my friends -- most of them not very close, even if they were before -- the fact that I'm not in their league in any sense of the word. ...
Come to think of it, I don't do yard work because I'm afraid of being looked at/judged by passersby. I don't do artwork because I'm afraid of ill-judgment and meaningless or worthless praise. This has gotten as bad as it ever was in the worst years of my adolescence. Worse, because I don't have the energy or the twenty years ahead of me to think I have plenty of time yet to pull myself out of it. It was a revelation to read this, especially the part about "as bad as it ever was in the worst years of my adolescence," because that's exactly what bugs me about the similar feelings I have—"WTF? I thought I was DONE with these feelings of self-consciousness. No one told me they would come back, dammit! I thought 'mid-life crisis' just meant you went out and got your virtual red sports car and had done with it." When a whole bunch of my friends and acquaintances are having similar uncomfortable feelings, and especially when each one is having these feelings privately and feeling shame about it because it seems like no one else has them, I ask myself whether there's some kind of cultural pressure going on, and I ask myself whether maybe we would do better examining these tendencies and pressures together, so we can figure out where we stand, and which of the beliefs and tendencies to embrace, and which to say pbtpbtpbtpbt!!!! to. I wonder how that could be accomplished. Do you have those feelings? Could you use a way to talk about those feelings with other folks who struggle with them? Tags: aging, day to day, feelings, feminism, happiness, health, pass it on, queries, things that piss me off, whinge
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