Open Enrollment Meetings, aka death panels for your wallet

Last year’s raucous town halls, with their anti-healthcare reform theme, will end up costing employees dearly this year, when we are presented with our health care options during our respective open enrollment periods.

Congratulations to all of you fist waggling, sign carrying, overtly angry folks who chose hyperbole over substance, and outrage over sensibility.

You’ve won!

Many of the people that I know are Republicans, so its not unusual for them to have voiced many opinions that were against practically everything that the Administration has tried to accomplish over the last two years. Their recitation of talking points prohibited us from having considered discussions on the issues.

We should have all been able to do better than that.

During a recent discussion on the options available to employers for keeping a lid on rising health care expenses, I was asked, “When will the “Obamacare” public option be available?”

I don’t think that I was successful in disguising my chagrin.

As we all should know, there is no public option in the health care reform law – thanks largely to the opposition from the Right. We are now, as we were before, at the mercy of insurance companies. I find it infuriating that the concept of a public option suddenly appeals to some people who opposed it, only when they are faced with a sudden increase to THEIR insurance costs.

This is making my head hurt.

In another conversation, I was told that one could go to any insurer’s website and sign up for a policy that was inexpensive. I agreed, but cautioned that the drawback to the attractive low monthly premium was that he would pay through the nose if he ever had to actually use his insurance. His response: “I’m young and in good health, so I should be okay.”

Where is my Motrin?

I searched eHealthInsurance.com for a low cost PPO plan for a 30-year old, non-smoking male, in my geographic region, and found that the monthly Aetna premium is only $97, after application approval, of course.

Great!

But wait, some of the plan details include:

• $1,500 deductible;
• 20% coinsurance;
• $30 copay; $50 for a specialist;
• 40% hospitalization coinsurance;
• $5,000 annual out-of-pocket expense.

Other plans excluded things like maternity hospitalization, and chiropractic or substance abuse treatment.

Okay, maybe not great. Let’s call it an “okay” plan.

In fact, it’s probably pretty close to the plan that would have been available to those who could not afford the $97 premium under a public option. So, it seems that the crux of the public option argument was this:

Should we (1) help struggling Americans obtain “okay” coverage, by offsetting some of their premium expense, and (2) force insurance companies to compete with the public plan in order to slow the increase of insurance costs for everyone?

Clearly, those are two horrible ideas. No wonder angry citizens took to the streets.

With that argument now behind us, we can all just move on. All that’s left for us to do is to remember to bring aspirin to our next open enrollment meeting.

We are going to need it.

Tagged as: death panels for your wallet, health care reform, open enrollment meetings, public option, ray colon, raycolon, rising health care costs, town halls

Author Bio:

Ray Colon has written 136 posts on Ray's Blog.

He works with numbers for a living, but don't judge - boring accountants need love too. His blog has no niche (unless writing about things that are important to him is a niche). Some folks cringe when he gets “all political” on them, but he does it anyway when he's in that kind of mood. Sometimes, he writes something nice about someone, but you shouldn't get used to that. His first book, the one he hasn't written yet, is not available on Amazon. Subscribe to Ray's Blog via RSS  or Email.

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