Happy Predict-How-Sick-You’ll-Be-Next-Year Season To All Who Celebrate!
Dearest Customers,
We are thrilled that yet another season of open enrollment is upon us! Thrilled because it provides us with the annual opportunity to exact our unilateral authority to raise prices once again while ensuring that the mediocre quality of service that you are used to receiving from our almost monopolistic enterprise will in no way suffer.
As with every year, we ask that before you select your health plan, take some time to very carefully calculate exactly how much you plan to be sick or injured in the next 12 months. Do you expect to get hit by a midsize SUV and need reconstructive spinal surgery? How about an appendix rupture? If you intend to get sick or injured often, we recommend paying exorbitant amounts for a high premium, low deductible plan. Otherwise, maybe try for a lower cost plan, knowing that any unanticipated medical care will result in the type of comically oversized bills you hear about in local news stories. All of these outcomes are of course entirely within your control, so you’ll want to spend some time on these decisions. They could cost or save you tens of thousands of dollars! Remember, close to 60% of personal bankruptcies are the result of medical debt.
We care about your health, and that’s why this year we’re excited to share that we’re moving most of our payment structures to co-insurance instead of co-pays. People hate co-pays and we agree, so we’ve done away with those nasty, predictable costs! Instead, we’ll work with you to share the burden of your medical bills. What that means is that if you’re hospitalized, rather than having to pay a whole $500 as a co-pay, you’ll only have to pay 25% of the cost of your visit. So when the emergency room charges us $5000 for putting Neosporin and a bandaid on that cut, you’ll only have to foot the bill for $1250 of it, even if you’ve hit your deductible! What a bargain.
This is our favorite time of the year. We love that it serves as an annual reminder that no better system exists anywhere in the developed world. Did you know if you move to the UK, as a foreigner you have to pay an entire 624 pounds a year for access to their free medical system? Or if you went to the Netherlands, insurance deductibles are capped at 385 euros? We’re so glad our system isn’t a broken one like those, because thanks to it we’re able to reap record multi-billion dollar profits. And of course we couldn’t have done that without you and the politicians that our industry spends more than $100 million a year lobbying so they will look the other way.
So happy Predict-how-sick-you’ll-be-next-year Season to you Americans. We hope you have a healthy year ahead, especially if you’re paying for a high premium plan!
With love and care as long as you pay for it,
Your Health Insurance Company
