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Health-care irony is contagious
(by Barbara Christian - March 17, 2010)
WINDOW ON MAIN STREET, BY BARBARA CHRISTIAN
Health-care irony is contagious
Don't you just love irony. Take, for example, the current debate over health-care-insurance reform.
Today, March 18, is the deadline set for Congress to deliver a health-reform bill to President Barack Obama. It is also the day Chagrin Falls officials were set to go over the latest contracts from two insurance companies bidding for the village's employee health coverage.
Background: This year, Chagrin Falls health-insurance rates increased by 31 percent, way higher than the rate of inflation. Like gas prices, insurance rates are a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma.
There were negotiations, and the village's insurance company decided it could manage to lower the increase to 20 percent. The negotiations prove how it's all just a dance. Here's how it goes.
Every year, Chagrin Falls is notified that its health-insurance rate is about to go up by some seemingly arbitrary number. Every year, negotiations follow, and the village emerges with a better deal.
This year, the 20 percent was not good enough, so Chagrin Falls sought a bid from a second insurer and got a more reasonable 5 percent increase over what it had been paying. Take the deal, you say? Not so fast.
Village Finance Director David Bloom, who, with village Administrator Ben Himes, serve as the employees' representatives in the process, tells us the low bid may not be the best for village workers.
While the village picks up the tab for the insurance premiums, that minor rate increase may mean employees will pay more in co-pays, be hit with a higher deductibles and be restricted to a certain group of doctors.
The dance is unsettling for employees, maddening for taxpayers and nerve-wracking for village leaders charged with doing right by them all.
Now, multiply the scenario by every hamlet, village, township and city, which, like a majority of us, must live on fixed or stagnant wages and see who comes away smiling and with their dance card full.
But this column is supposed to be about irony, so ... Remember a few months ago when radio talker Rush Limbaugh was flattened by illness while vacationing in Hawaii? Remember when he emerged from his hospital bed and held a press conference? With a Hawaiian health-care worker by his side, remember how he said there's nothing wrong with the health-care system in the United States?
He's right. There is nothing wrong with the health care in the U.S. What needs lifesaving intervention is the health-care-insurance system, which some say is the real villain in rationing health care and is the real death panel.
And isn't it ironic that what Rush didn't know when he made his magnanimous proclamation is that the Hawaiian health system he had enjoyed has been partly "socialized" for years.
An anti-union guy as well, Rush also was unaware that many of his Hawaiian caregivers are card-carrying union members. Now, that's irony.
Someone must have tipped off old Rush, because two weeks ago he announced, if health insurance reforms are enacted in the U.S., he would go to Costa Rica for his medical needs. Oops again. Costa Rica operates under a universal health-care system.
Don't you just love irony?
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