Gibson writes: "So why am I paying the $300 penalty? Through healthcare.gov, I found that as a single 26 year-old male living in Dane County, Wisconsin, who expects to make somewhere around $30,000 next year, the most affordable health insurance package for me comes with a deductible anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000. That's roughly 15 percent of my income that comes out of pocket before my health insurance even kicks in."
Obamacare has a big hurdle with young people. (photo: David McNew/Getty Images)
Why I'm Choosing to Pay $300 to Stay Uninsured
24 December 13
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ould you pay $5 to save $1? I didn't ace Math in school, but I do at least know that a Lincoln is worth more than a Washington. If you were presented with this deal in a store, to buy a $5 item to get $1 off another, most people don't see that as a deal. Now, multiply those numbers by a thousand, and you may start to understand why the "young invincibles" of America aren't participating in the healthcare exchanges.
Two days before Christmas was the last day for people to enroll in the health insurance programs on healthcare.gov to be ready by January 1st. We're all supposed to enroll by March of 2014 to not be penalized $300 for being uninsured. But for me, $300 is much cheaper than the alternatives. I'm a 26-year-old man who eats his veggies and exercises daily. I don't get flu shots, and haven't gotten the flu since I was in middle school (knock on wood). I also meditate daily. As a result, the sickest I ever get is a sniffle here and there. I was 15 years old the last time I got an annual physical exam, and am no worse for wear now than I was 11 years ago.
So why am I paying the $300 penalty? Through healthcare.gov, I found that as a single 26 year-old male living in Dane County, Wisconsin, who expects to make somewhere around $30,000 next year, the most affordable health insurance package for me comes with a deductible anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000. That's roughly 15 percent of my income that comes out of pocket before my health insurance even kicks in. This "affordable care" would cost me about $150 a month, and I'm having a hard enough time even putting away $100 a month into my savings account when you take rent, a car loan, groceries, gas, heat, and phone bills into account. And unlike most people my age, I was privileged enough to attend college without having to take out student loans, so I'm a lot better off financially than most of my peers.
The biggest healthcare cost of my life was $6,000 in surgery back in Fall of 2011, when I broke my elbow in two places. I was uninsured, so the cost of that procedure came out of pocket. Parents and elderly friends gave me plenty of shit for not having health insurance, saying I could have saved myself a lot of money by being insured. However, if I'd had the health insurance package I mentioned above, $5,000 of that surgery would still have to be paid for out of my own pocket. Sure, I'd save $1,000 in the end, but I'd have to pay $5,000 to do it.
I didn't suffer any other catastrophic accidents until January of 2013, when I was run off the road while riding a bike in Florida and fractured my right arm. Since I was uninsured, the emergency care clinic down the road from my accident wouldn't even see me, so I had to drive myself to an emergency room at a hospital close to Immokalee. The total cost of a doctor X-raying my arm and wrapping it up in a bandage and a sling was in the neighborhood of $2,500.
Even if I'd had the health insurance plan I mentioned above back when the accident happened, that entire cost would have still come out of my own pocket. And since I didn't see the doctor for the rest of the year or hurt myself bad enough to go to a hospital, I wouldn't have even paid my whole deductible before my health insurance kicked in. I would've just paid $150 a month for the remainder of the year, an $1800 blow to my already strained finances - for nothing.
The administration is really hoping that people my age will sign up for health insurance on healthcare.gov. But only 29 percent of people my age say they'll be signing up. The whole premise of the individual mandate is that when everyone signs up for health insurance, the risk pool becomes healthier as a result, and health insurance becomes less costly for everyone. However, it's been found that young healthy people not participating would have a very minimal effect on health insurance costs, so our non-participation isn't the end of the world.
And given situations like mine, why the hell would any young person, in this tenuous economy, want to pay upwards of $1800 in premiums on top of a $2,000 to $5,000 deductible for healthcare costs that may or may not even occur? Does it make more fiscal sense to pay $3800 to $6800 a year to have health insurance and see a doctor when shit happens, or to pay $300 to be uninsured and hope for the best?
This is precisely the problem with the American healthcare system, and with our worthless representatives in Congress. No other developed country makes its citizens endure so much financial strain just to have access to a doctor when they're hurt or sick. I personally wouldn't mind paying a few percentage points more in taxes each year so I can see the doctor without worrying about which bill I'll have to not pay in order to do it. And judging by the debacle of a giant taxpayer-funded subsidy to the private health insurance companies known as Obamacare, I bet most Americans who can't afford our current healthcare system could alternatively afford a marginally-higher tax rate to have guaranteed healthcare.
The entire reason single payer healthcare - in which one payer, the taxpayer, pays for healthcare - or a public health insurance alternative to the private insurance companies didn't make it into the final healthcare reform bill was because of corporate-owned senators like Max Baucus, Joe Liebermann, and the entire GOP caucus. It isn't because they were so concerned about people being able to have the best access to healthcare, but because all of those senators count on the private health insurance industry's bribes to win the next election cycle. Liebermann's wife was a lobbyist for Hill & Knowlton, a firm that represented big pharmaceutical and health insurance companies. Insurance companies are the top industry contributing to Baucus's campaign war chest between 2009 and 2014. Most Americans can put two and two together.
It's crucial to understand that the only reason private health insurance companies exist is to profit from the illness and injury of others. That's literally the only reason they're in business. Sure, abolishing the private health insurance industry may cost a few jobs, but if your job is based on figuring out the best way to make money off of someone else's suffering, that's definitely a job that never should have existed in the first place. Healthcare is a human right, not a commodity only the rich deserve.
We won't have universal healthcare until we have a Congress that listens to the American people. We won't have a Congress with integrity until the bad ones get voted out. The bad ones won't get voted out until we get big money out of politics altogether. And that won't happen until we the people organize for enough states to sign onto a constitutional amendment that says corporations aren't people and money isn't speech. So until then, I'll pay my $300 penalty for being uninsured, and try my best to stay healthy and well while I organize for those things to happen.
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Carl Gibson, 26, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Madison, Wisconsin. You can contact him at carl@rsnorg.org, and follow him on twitter at @uncutCG.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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the New Yorker is still so far behind the curve
of the second decade of the Bremer Brigade's
reckless predation that it's all but invisible in
smooth cosmopolitan pieces like this where,
compared to their subjects they do nothing.
David Remnick surely knows all this and much more,
so why is the New Yorker as flat as it has been since 9/11?
This is journalism as fashion. Just say what is the latest style. As we know by the logic of fashion, its truth changes very rapidly.
I'm sure the Saudis are thrilled that their boys are doing God's work. It's also interesting that Saudi Arabia takes no refugees from Syria.
All of these nations (including Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, etc.) had/have their own central banks and controlled/cont rol their own currency.
In addition, Syria is a key part of the path for cartel oil to be delivered to Europe, to counter the Russian monopoly.
The false flag in Paris, which resulted in France declaring war which they did not do after 9-ll, and which invokes certain aspects of the NATO treaty, along with Turkey's attack on a Russian jet, makes it clear that the cartel is trying to find a plausible way to keep the Russians from destroying their mercenaries, ISIS and "the Syrian opposition."
As soon as the Russian blow up the weapons that the U.S. and NATO have been supplying their mercenaries, more weapons are dropped.
http://coloradopublicbanking.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-view-from-top-of-power-pyramid.html
As an addendum, I will post Aaron Russo revealing what he says Nickolaus Rockefellar told him about one year before 9/11/2001 re an event, terrorism, RFID chips, and banking. Re interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gwcQjDhZtI
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/
A little long, but necessary for all of the background.
No, it isn't, it is actually a mercenary arm of the oil companies and international banks. They are not fighting to restore the Iraq government, in any way, shape or form.