My Take on Health Insurance

I enjoy good health, and sickness is an exception in my case. At best, I suffer from old age pangs, like stiff and aching joints, hearing and vision depletion. Though I regularly take those prescribed gendered tests, yet I’m of the firm view that as long as I’m not feeling it, I don’t need to visit a doctor!

Thus, it’s been years that I visited my primary care provider. I’m recently retired and thus, ineligible for Medicare. That’s the reason why I take special interest in different plans offered by the health insurance companies. If you are employed, the subsidy from employer takes care of most of the insurance expenditure, but this is not the case when you are retired. My worries get magnified on learning that the cost for insurance under COBRA (the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) will run into several thousands of dollars. That’s the reason of my being skeptical about the whole issue of getting insured.

I’m always reminded of the words by Harry Callahan: “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: ‘Do I feel lucky?’” I found out that the best way to answer this question is by going in for routine physical examination to rule out any major issues with my health. Thereafter, the doctor’s visit only end up seeding doubts in my mind about my health in particular, and health insurance in America in general.

Though my doctor has all the qualities that a “good doctor” must have, i.e., good medical knowledge, advanced qualifications, good mannerisms, and above all, a caring attitude towards all his patients. However, my last visit didn’t earn him any brownie points, as I had to contend with an absurd questionnaire that I had to fill while waiting in the examining room. One question asking for reasons for your visit had an option “Need a hug”! Now, that’s something you don’t expect from a doctor with above qualities.

Now to some serious stats! US Health and Human Services will tell you that the average cost of a visit to a primary care physician in 2007 was $100, and with inflationary times staring at us, I’m sure the cost has increased considerably since then. Two questions I’d like to propose to the readers: a) Are we so out of touch with our Selves that we need a doctor to tell us that we don’t need a doctor? b) Do insurers really cover the cost of visits to doctors for the dispensation of hugs?

I’m sure most people won’t visit their doctors for these reasons. The most important factor contributing to our health insurance mania is a publicity-induced thought-process that compels you to believe that your body is prone to the most unheard of diseases and unforeseen dangers, and requires a constant intake of vitamin supplements, whole body X-Ray, needless surgeries, and superficial fine-tuning.

It seems that the holistic approach - which assumes that not feeling sick does not necessarily mean that one is well, but is merely somewhere between well and sick — encourages a distortion of perception. A wait-and-watch policy regarding minor health issues is a passé. I still remember how my mother used to caress my forehead with her gentle hands to comfort me, and assured that I’ll be well soon; and it always worked. She used to kiss a boo-boo to “make it all better,” and surely, that kiss had magical healing properties. She used to take me to the doctor only for vaccinations and persistent or serious symptoms, and certainly, not for sneezing, rashes and minor stomach ache.

In conclusion, I’m remembered of profound words by a scholar. In “The Lives of a Cell”, the late Dr. Lewis Thomas, erstwhile president of Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and dean of the medical schools at New York University and Yale, wrote, “The great secret, known to internists and learned very early in marriage by their wives, but still hidden from the general public, is that most things get better by themselves. Most things, in fact, are better by morning.”