Ramblings About Healthcare and Medicare

I did just hear a blurb on TV that for 2014 the cuts to Medicare Advantage for 2014 have been reversed! I will explore more about this later.

Good Morning!

I had planned to explore the questions raised in last post by doing more research.  Also I planned to interview those that travel with Medicare Advantage and those with traditional Medicare with supplement.  Instead I have wrestled with the changes I have seen in health insurance in the last 50 years.  I wake up at night thinking about these. 

I have been a nurse educator since 1975.  I became interested in this profession while serving as a candy stripe volunteer in 1963.  I remember in the latter experience many individuals were in long wards and there were few semi-private and/or private rooms.  Some people did have insurance.  I did not ask but they were probably the ones in the semi-private rooms.  During influenza season, there would be patients in the hallways with a screen around them.  Back to the insurance of this time, I remember my father expressing excitement over a new job that had major medical insurance.  This is probably what we now term “catastrophic”. In college, I had single policy that covered only hospitalization.  If I went to a physician not in the student health service, I paid out of pocket.  Twenty dollars was a large office visit payment.  Somewhere I got caught up in other things and did not realize  I had a job with insurance that covered part of the office visit and any medications prescribed.  I hardly used the healthcare system at that time.  I was a young twenty something.  As thrilled as I was when I figured this out,  I remember thinking this could be a complicated development and expensive.    It has become very expensive and quite complicated.  I was in Florida recently and needed to go to a “doc in a box” for an eye infection.  There was a sign stating fees for one paying cash versus insurance filing...  The cash payment was much less.  I thought about it for a minute and then paid cash.  I later sent it into my insurance because I forgot I needed to meet my now large deductible. 

Now with the newest changes it is even more costly and complicated.  I hear the stories about social medicine in Canada and the UK.  There are countries in Europe with quite good social medicine plans.  I have a friend in Switzerland that experienced cancer and the treatment with both good results and comparable treatment to our best facilities.  Why can’t we reference and explore plans other than the UK and Canada?  If we are not going to let the free market work in this situation, we need to look at other models.  Is it so about money and politics that we can no longer problem solve?  Sorry for my rambling today.  With retirement coming it is frightening.  Many call my generation’s Medicare an entitlement.  I will remind those that a percentage was taken out of my pay checks for this coverage.  If I had been putting it into investments over the years, I may have been able to pay out of pocket for my care in ways we saw mid-twentieth century.   I am interested in what others think about my rambling?