Ok. So here’s my rant about insurance.
Three years ago I weighed over 250 pounds. For my sex and height, that put my squarely in the Obese category. I was fat, unhappy, and unhealthy. But at that point I had not experienced any medical problems resulting directly from my weight. In general I would have said I was in good shape, not that round is exactly an optimal shape. I was resigned to the fact that I was just heavy thanks to genetics and other factors that I could not control. But in actuality I simply wasn’t eating right or being active. If I had continued down that path, I have no doubt in my mind that my health would have gotten worse and worse with every year that passed. Obesity is the number one growing problem in America. According to the JAMA (Flegal KM, Carroll MD, Ogden CL, Johnson CL. Prevalence and trends in obesity among US adults, 1999-2000. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2002;288:1723-1727.) “Nearly one-third of U.S. adults are obese (BMI > 30).” And another third are overweight. So that means, for all you math majors, only one third of the American population is at their ideal body weight.
I don’t think I need to list all the diseases associated with obesity, but diabetes, heart disease, stroke, hypertension, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis (degeneration of cartilage and bone of joints), sleep apnea and other breathing problems, and cancer (uterine, breast, colorectal, kidney, and gallbladder) immediately come to mind. All these obese people come with a price. “A recent study estimated annual medical spending due to overweight and obesity (BMI > 25) to be as much as $92.6 billion in 2002 dollars (9.1 percent of U.S. health expenditures). http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/full/hlthaff.w3.219v1/DC1. ”
If I had continued on the path I was on, I would have been a financial burden to myself, my insurance company and my country. They would have to had treated me for any number of costly conditions. But instead, on my own, I decided to lose weight. And again, that expense was out of pocket. Supposedly you can now write off any Doctor recommended weight loss attempts on your taxes, but I missed that boat. If you figure I spent $10 a week at weight watchers, for 2 and a half years until I hit goal, you arrive at $1300. Now add to that all the weight loss accessories like clothes, cookbooks, gym memberships, bikes, sports teams fees, health food, and various other thing, that number could easily double or triple. The result was that I lost over 100 pounds, and I gladly would pay that money all over again for the results I achieved.
But I was left with, what I feel, is a medical condition of lose and hanging skin. So now I embark on a $5000 surgery. Elective surgery they say. For insurance to cover the procedure, I would need to have a long and documented history of severe rashes, back problems from the hanging skin, or some other serious medical condition. Nevermind that I’ve saved them thousands and thousands of dollars for my future treatments by losing my weight. Insurance is such a scam. I remember reading about one insurance company that covered the prescription Viagra for men, but would not cover one woman’s birth control pill. How messed up is that?
My point is that I feel in America we often wait until the last minute to solve our problems. We ignore the old adage of “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” It’s too easy to wait until someone has a problem to solve it, instead of preventing it all together. We end up rewarding the people who don’t take care of themselves and punishing those who do. Insurance reform is long due in this country, and there are plenty of cases that are far, far worse than my minor gripe. I just hope in the future the power will shift from the big business of health care and prescription drugs and move back into the hands of the people.