Just When You Thought the U.S. Health-care System Couldn't Be More Screwed...

By Quill

You find out it just got that much worse. Via the New York Times, it seems that more and more insurance companies are adopting a new pricing plan that changes their co-payment policies to something referred to as a Tier-4 plan. Instead of charging a fixed sum (like $20 or $30) for a given prescription that may cost between $1,000-$3,500, insurance companies are now charging clients a certain percentage (as much as 30%) of the total cost of ridiculously expensive medication. FYI, 20% of $3,500 is $1,050. Imagine spending that every time you needed to buy a bottle of pills for medication necessary to extend your life.

In fact, the people affected most by the new Tier-4 fad are chronically ill people suffering from diseases like cancer, multiple sclerosis, and rheumatoid arthritis.

Apparently, this change is being increasingly adopted by insurance companies claiming that higher co-payments for sick people mean lower premiums for healthy people:

Private insurers began offering Tier 4 plans in response to employers who were looking for ways to keep costs down, said Karen Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans, which represents most of the nation’s health insurers. When people who need Tier 4 drugs pay more for them, other subscribers in the plan pay less for their coverage.

But the new system sticks seriously ill people with huge bills, said James Robinson, a health economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “It is very unfortunate social policy,” Dr. Robinson said. “The more the sick person pays, the less the healthy person pays.”

What. The. Fuck.

I thought the point of insurance was to help you pay for medical costs if you got sick. If not, what the hell is the point of insurance?

Another disturbing facet of this incomprehensibly irresponsible policy change is that this trend began with Medicare insurance companies, almost all of which have switched to the Tier-4 pricing plan, and has recently spread to 10% of private insurance companies. So people who are disabled, impoverished, or on some kind of state aid - the people who are least likely to be able to afford the rising costs - are being severely affected by Tier-4 tyranny.

Although good news may be on the horizon for people with private insurance - some companies like Kaiser are "reassessing" the new policy due to customer's concerns - the fact is, nobody knows how many people these drastically rising costs are affecting. How many people out there, in the middle of this recession, are having to choose between life-saving medication and other expenses like their mortgage, college for their kids, and increasingly expensive staples such as milk, bread and eggs?

I think that Americans have taken the "put-your-nose-to-the-grindstone-don't-ask-for-anything-pray-to-God-to-take-care-of-us" level of independence too far. We have to recognize that our government has a duty to care for the citizens who pay taxes to it, who send their kids to war for it, whose purchases keep the economy from going even farther down the toilet. The truth is, the government needs to step in and fix the God-forsaken cruel joke that is the U.S. health-care system, but that won't happen until we demand it; until the People demand it, all of us.

It's not demanding socialism, it's demanding justice.