They should call it Insurance Reform. Our personal experience.

It seems appropriate to post our experience with insurance given that the Healthcare Bill was made law today. Healthcare reform is not the right label for the issue. Healthcare doesn’t need fixing. Doctors, nurses and surgeons are skilled and compassionate and don’t need overhauling. Hospitals and surgery centers are state of the art. It’s the insurance industry that needs to be melted down and redesigned for the current times. It’s outdated, too powerful and needs to be reconfigured from scratch. Not tweaked.


As we prepare for our travels, we’re applying for private insurance that will only be necessary if we have to come back to the US for an unexpected reason. (We’ll be covered by another policy for care needed internationally.) The policy we’d like has a $10,000 deductible, won’t be touched for 12 months, and we can’t get it. We’re experiencing firsthand the inequities and crazy policies of insurance. We were denied coverage by one company for having the term ‘degenerating’ in a medical file. Give me a break, who isn’t degenerating? We’re humans, we’re aging, we’re active. The body breaks down. A degenerating knee is considered a preexisting condition so we’re considered uninsurable, too risky; even with a $10,000 deductible. There is something terribly wrong with this system. How can they only insure completely healthy people? If the issue had been called Insurance Reform, it’s not only more accurate but our guess is that more people would get behind the change that is required. times.