Obamanomics and Healthcare

I found a receipt for my short hospital stay almost 53 years ago. It cost my parents $100.00 to get me out of hock..er out of the nursery and bring me home. I looked up the current costs and found that a baby is going to cost between $6000.00-16,000.00 now. It all depends on whether or not there is need for a C-section and if there are other complications.

Thirty-five years ago my friend was without insurance when her son was born. She had the $25.00 a month plan and paid him off in full. Years ago people my age and older actually paid their medical bills like that and it worked. You knew it was your obligation and you paid. I just recently finished paying my portion of my hospital bills from last year. Even paying my 10% was difficult, but I got the job done.

Earlier this month I had an MRI. I have insurance and my cost was about $43.00 which had to be paid before I had it done. Because I have insurance the MRI folks who normally charge $2525.00 for this test were willing to accept less than $500.00 in total from my insurance company and me. Without insurance and without a pre-test agreement, they would expect me to pay their full amount.

What to do when you don't have insurance isn't a new problem. Years ago you weighed your salary by the benefits that were provided. You were willing to work for less per hour when the medical benefits were there. What happened to those days? Employers couldn't keep up with the higher costs of insurance and maintain the same salaries for their employees. My insurance was once paid in full by my employer. Those days are long gone. I am not complaining. I have insurance.

Those of us with insurance are noticing that pending legislation has our providers panicky and our premiums are going up, not down. Employers are requiring their employees to jump through more hoops. A friend of mine had to submit to having blood tests, being weighed and measured in order to have benefits from her employer. Workers are being separated into tiers of risk and being charged accordingly. No doubt this is the insurance industry's answer to not being allowed to refuse coverage to some. Insurance is a transfer of risk. The more risk the insurance company is willing or made to assume the more they want you to pay. When their risk increases, so do your premiums... even if you are not the cause of the increase. Some of the cost gets distributed to everyone.

Are we trying to take health insurance the way of automobile insurance? The more accidents and tickets you have as a driver and what type of car you drive have a direct impact on the cost of your insurance- along with geography, state laws and claims paid out. How much your insurance company pays in claims in an area influences the cost to everyone in that area. Some folks are such bad drivers they cannot get insurance unless they go to their state's assigned risk plan. In states where insurance is mandatory, the state evenly distributes those few drivers who are an unacceptable risk and refused the chance to purchase insurance to all the companies providing insurance in that state. That way no one company has to take all the bad drivers. You can bet the health insurance companies want no part in being regulated like this and I am not sure we want them to be either. I don't have the answers. I don't think the government does either- despite the charming assurances of President Obama.

HOWEVER, I would rather have saddled my grand-kids with taxes to provide some folks health care than bailout/bonuses for executives and the companies they ruined. Trouble is, nobody asked me.

My only comfort is knowing none of this has caught God by surprise. He isn't in heaven wondering how to bail us out. Now, watch the video again and smile.

Character Flaws, Sin and Remediation

I have been thinking about my last post in which I offered to talk about how having a job has shown or magnified my character flaws. Before I do though, I want to distinguish between character flaws and sin. My character flaws predispose me to sin in certain areas more readily than in others. Indulging in my character flaws is sinful. Entertaining the idea of indulging my character flaws is sinful. They are the weaknesses in me where my flesh makes itself known by screaming, "You know you want to!!" Too often I hear Christians lamenting that they "make mistakes" or are victims of their genetic make-up and intimate that they should, therefore, be excused from culpability for being prone to certain activities. Our cultural dependence on a medical model to define our behavior has given many what they see as a plausible excuse for sin. I don't see that caveat in the Word. For Christians, the Word is always our standard. It is the standard by which all will be j

Fear Down, Hope and Peace to Go!

Last night I had the honor and privilege to present some information to the women of my church. I cannot begin to tell you how much I love and appreciate them. The seminar I did was on fear. God is clever and He had me present the information to them because I needed it. It's not that I don't want to study things for my own benefit and growth, but whenever I do a topical study to teach it, I see how badly I needed it and how much more I have to repent of than I realized. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. That's a topic I want to return to in another post. I want to talk about the ladies for a moment. They are an incredibly loving group of women. Women who seek God and are teachable. They have gone out of their way to include me and love on me, which speaks volumes of their characters because I am not all that lovable. I am not being self-deprecating here. I am a mix of endearing and maddening qualities like anyone else. What I am telling you is

Super Church a song for the Emergent-sy

In the early 70s I was in a youth choir at my church. Our youth pastor was a musician and his way of connecting with us as a group was through the choir and music. Somehow there was an affiliation between him and The Continental Singers, New Hope and Jeremiah People. He was worked with Moishe Rosen of Jews for Jesus too, I think. Are any of these names familiar to you? Though I remember the church fondly I was a profoundly lost and troubled young woman during my years there. That and time have muddled the memories quite a bit. Today I was digging through some old paperwork and one of the books to the musical we did. It's Getting Late For the Great Planet Earth, a folk rock oratorio by Cam Floria. Yes, that's right. Cam Floria put Hal Lindsey to music. There's a lot to laugh about and some to groan about but as I was looking through the songs and remembering, I found this little ditty and I only wish I could sing it for you. Just remember that this is circa 1972 and even th

rambling rosemarie

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