Personal Challenge: Day 14

I am giving myself until October 31, 2018 to develop a better healthcare payment and insurance plan for my family.

Why that date? Because it is the last day for open enrollment at my current employer. I am already locked into the 2018 calendar year to participate in my employer's health plan, unless I quit or get fired.

Why a personal plan? Because no one is going to give me a reasonable, cost-effective plan. The healthcare systems in the United States are damaged. They are public and private bureaucratic nightmares. Yes, the healthcare systems do provide some of the best care in the world, but it is doing so with a decaying concept of insurance and mounting administrative costs.

It is high time that I become a master of my family's healthcare. And I am already 13 days behind the eight ball.

The Fallacy of "Healthcare Insurance"

It is easy to forget that for decades the United States HAD a health care system that was the envy of the world. We had the finest doctors and hospitals, patients received high-quality, affordable medical care, and thousands of privately funded charities provided health services for the poor. I worked in an emergency room where nobody was turned away for lack of funds. People had insurance policies for serious health problems but paid cash for routine doctor visits.

The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul

Insurance companies are pushing fake "health insurance" that is actually mostly very-short-term savings/redistribution schemes with marginal real insurance value compelling doctors to avoid transparent prices BECAUSE OF fake "health insurance?" That's what Dr. Paul is talking about: "People had insurance policies for serious health problems but paid cash for routine doctor visits."

The concept of insurance was never to insure the routine, but to insure the unlikely but catastrophic. Obamacare is not only mandating that individuals have health insurance, but that individuals participate in very-short-term savings schemes with extremely high overhead (negative savings) and redistribution schemes that take from those with no routine care needs and give to those who do.