Only the Healthy Stay Insured

As people continue to be forced to rely upon employer based healthcare insurance anyone who is in the greatest need for healthcare are being shut out and denied the medical access they need.

As the system is currently set up, a person must have a job with an employer which provides healthcare coverage. Alternatively, a person needs to be married or related to a person who holds a job with an employer that provides healthcare insurance. In the day and age when many people are not married to the person they live with or are homosexual and are not allowed to marry their partner, there are a significant number of people who cannot get access to healthcare insurance through their partners.

Even the people who have healthcare insurance are one sickness away from being without any insurance. If a person gets too sick to work for more than twelve weeks, there is no national law which requires that the employer continue paying or providing an employee with healthcare insurance. On the thirteenth week that a person has a serious health condition which prevents them from working is the end of that person’s access to healthcare coverage because they will have been dropped from their employer based health insurance plan.

Federal law requires that when a person leaves a job that the employer offer the employee eighteen months worth of healthcare coverage at the employee’s expense. It is unlikely that many people who lose their jobs due to a serious health condition can pay the premiums for the COBRA coverage, which is likely over $300 per month. If the person is too sick to work, then it is unlikely that they can afford such expensive healthcare insurance.

Ultimately, the person who needs healthcare insurance the most, a person with a serious health condition, is most at risk of losing his/her healthcare insurance because the person is too sick to work and therefore has no access to the insurance. If the person loses their healthcare insurance, then they will likely start being denied the quality healthcare that is necessary for them to get healthy. In the end they are more likely to die or stay sick for a longer period of time than necessary because this nation continues to adhere to the arcane employment based healthcare system.

The irony of the system is that those who need healthcare coverage the least are the people who have the easiest time getting the coverage. The people who are healthy enough to work full-time at a decent job which provides benefits gets the coverage. Many of these people do not utilize it often or at all. From an insurance companies perspective this may be beneficial because they are collecting premiums from people for whom they are not paying large amounts of money to. This translates into profits for the insurance companies.

Health insurance should not be provided only to the people who make the insurance companies the largest profit they can acquire. Most people are trying to do the right thing. They are working hard and providing a roof over their children’s head. They should not be denied access to medical health care when they need it the most, when they acquire a serious health condition.