‘Health care reform?’ Hush! You’ll anger the Insurance Gods!

Is this all we can do, get an AARP shirt? BD

You’ve heard about how one in seven Americans, or some such awful number, has no health insurance. But I’m not here to talk about that. Today, I’m talking about the other six of us who have coverage. If routine — not even catastrophic, but routine — health care is “affordable” for those of us with insurance, then somebody redefined the word while my brain was imploding from trying to figure out which health plan to pick for next year.

Too many Americans are locked into jobs or stopped from opening their own businesses because of worries about affording or maintaining health insurance.” Hah! “Opening their own businesses?” I’ll let the saps who don’t have families and think they’ll never get sick engage in such crazy entrepreneurial tricks as that.

Just the other day I went to my allergist’s office to get the results of my first skin tests in 20 years. I’d been getting allergy shots based on the old tests all that time, and my allergist, being a highly trained professional, thought it might be a good idea to see if I was still allergic to the same stuff. Actually, I can’t tell you for sure that the shots ever helped. So why get them? Because my insurance pays for allergy shots, but won’t pay any more for me to take Zyrtec, which I know relieved my symptoms. The Insurance Gods say I don’t need Zyrtec.

Then my pharmacy said my copay for my 30 generic pills would be $81.95. Stunned, I asked why? They shrugged and said no one knew; the Insurance Gods just said so. I shut up and paid it, even though it meant delaying paying on my mortgage or my electricity bill or some other frill. I think the pills helped, but I certainly wasn’t going to get a refill.

And there’s not a lot we can do about it — except maybe get one of those red T-shirts, and show up every time a presidential candidate comes to town. They’ve got boxes full of them at AARP headquarters, and they’ll give you one for free.