Break Out of the Systems, Choose Freedom and Build a Better World Together
Once a month on our Tuesday Coffee With Nicole show, we go unplugged and today is that day. Join me for a conversation about the US Healthcare system and its impact on freedom
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Main content of the show
What are my options for health insurance?
This is the question I got most often when people are looking to transition out of a live on the job conveyer belt to working for themselves.
Indeed, one of the biggest reasons give to me by a more left leaning friend of mine for WHY we needed Obamacare was health insurance. Note that I do not refer to this as healthcare and that is with reason. He pointed out that, as an aspiring entrepreneur you already are facing a hard road ahead, but if you get sick you could lose everything and health insurance is so expensive.
I remember ending that conversation pointing out that he and I wanted the same thing, affordable health care so that sick people can get what they need to get better. We just wanted it in a different way.
Then another friend told me about her experience being in a car crash in great Britain which has a more socialized healthcare system than in the US. At the hostpital, they had no idea how to get paid for helping her so there was a fight for every step in her care until she finally figured out how to charter a flight out of that country and back home for care. She wanted to just pay since she did not qualify for care there (and must not have had travel insurance) but they had no way to do that.
In the early aughts, I was workign for myself and carried one of those plans where you hold a high deductible and put up to something like 75% of you annual deductible into an HSA for when you need it. This meant I needed to pay case for care up to about $1000 a year (That was a high deductible 20 years ago yo) and I would talk with the office manager before getting seen to negotiate my fees for 25-40% less if I paid cash up front. Because they spent WAY less in resources getting paid when they did not need to bill insurance.
Then I needed a specialist - and that specialist did a bunch of tests without my permission, did not tell me what they were looking for and biopsied me in a way that has left a long-term disfiguration that was unnecessary. I was diagnosed with an autoimmune skin condition called lichen sclerosis in my 20s and they had no idea how to treat it. When I went to negotiate the bill, the office manager had no idea what to charge me at time of service because their billing system was so complicated. She kept asking me to apply for government assistance so that they could bill me at those rates and when I tried to pay with cash, she had no idea what to do. Months later, there was a bill, I made a call and offered 60% of it cash, and they accepted that offer.
The struggle is real yall.
Problems with the US Healthcare System
- Being sick and dying sucks and sometimes they have no idea what to do
- Chronic illness is on the rise alongside obesity and there are more people needing more help
- We already had a doctor to patient problem coming with the boomer retirement wave and we made it worse with all the drama of the pandemic
- We have been programmed to equate health insurance with healthcare
- Incentives in the system are toward increased beauracracy
- Codes and billing have made it worse over time and this starts in medicaid
- Health insurance as a tax deduction was incentivised in the 40s and messed with in the 50s leading to the transition from cash for care to the broken system we have now - and back then, being sick and dying still sucked
- Culture shift: Health care and medical support became an elite system that cut out alternative healing, health coaching, and prevention and focused on first cures, then management
One thing that has made US progress happen faster than other places: Rich Sick People
What does this mean for freedom? Like everything else your health and health care is your responsibilty. Are the insurance companies to blame? Yes but so are the nonprofit hospitals, the doctors who allowed biling to be taken from them, managed health care systems, the IRS, etc. It is not a single villian and that makes it hard to beat.
Erosion of dental
Erosion of veterinary
Hope:
Cash Clinics
Concierge Care
Growing body of knowledge on nutrition, lifestyle choices and in the impact of big food on our bodies
Functional medicine
Integrated Manual Therapy
PMAs
Drs and Nurses doing their best from inside the system to help people get care
But this impacts your freedom in a big way doesnt it?
The only way to fix this one is to invest your time, money and energy in an alternative and become the solution – and yet if there is a fencepost through your leg, you are going to end up in THE SYSTEM right now so you want to be ready for that.
Health Shares
Relationships and Kindness
Obamacare plans and employer insurance
Private Insurance
But we need to keep our eye on the long term and, help build it, and be ready to jump when the jumpin is good.
Make it a great week!
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