Chad asked:

When Cary Hicks lost his group health insurance earlier this year, he was floored by how much an individual policy could cost him because he is a diabetic.

“I was looking for anything,” said Hicks, who runs a small construction company. “I didn’t have insurance. I couldn’t afford any.”

That’s when Hicks discovered a new public health insurance program created by the North Carolina legislature. He now pays $550 a month in premiums — not cheap, but one-third of what a similar policy would have cost him in the private market.

As Congress debates how to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, North Carolina has dipped its toe into the public-option debate. Those who can’t find affordable health insurance from private companies because they have cancer, heart disease or other ailments now have the option of buying insurance from a high-risk pool set up by the state.

The program, called Inclusive Health, is little known. It has enrolled 2,050, only half of the number expected. But an estimated 1.4 million North Carolinians don’t have health insurance.

Inclusive Health is aimed largely at helping middle-class people who wake up one morning and find themselves without health insurance. Enrollees have either been turned down by private insurance companies, have lost their jobs or don’t have access to Medicare or Medicaid.

Hicks, 54, of Garner, said he had never given much thought to health insurance before this year. He was covered under his wife’s policy until January, when her employer, Corporate Press, a 40-year-old Raleigh printing company, went out of business. His construction company, which mainly builds fences, was too small to afford health insurance.

Bad luck sometimes comes in bunches. Hicks, who had not been hospitalized in 12 years, got an infected elbow in March, and the infection spread to his bloodstream. It put him the hospital for a week — a $12,000 out-of-pocket expense.

After a taste of being uninsured, Hicks went shopping for a health insurance policy. But because he is a severe diabetic, and therefore viewed as a high risk, the cost was prohibitive. Hicks said the state’s biggest insurer, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, which has 86 percent of individual health insurance policies in the state, offered a policy with a $1,648 monthly premium. Hicks said that was unaffordable at a time when his household had gone from two incomes to one.

“We’ve got to eat, and we’ve got a house payment,” Hicks said. “It was just too much to handle.”

He saw a brief item in The News & Observer about the start of a new state health insurance program. Within a month, he had enrolled in Inclusive Health. His premium is $550 per month, and it covers his three daily shots of insulin, his blood pressure medicine and other medical costs.

North Carolina became the 35th state to create a high-risk health insurance plan in 2007, after a decade of debate in the legislature. It began offering insurance policies in January.

The measure had the backing of health groups, physicians, hospitals and insurance agents.

Adam Searing, a health-care consumer expert, said North Carolina’s high-risk pool is relatively industry friendly compared with those in other states. It includes a restriction that the risk pool charge premiums 175 percent of what private insurers charge, so as not to compete with private markets. And it provides no subsidies for the poor.

While it helps middle-class people without insurance, it is of little use

Bobby Parrish asked:


Recently, on CNN’s “State of the Union”, Senator John McCain, R-Arizona, said we have the best health care system in the world. I have heard this more than once from people who should know better. It seems like a battle cry from the right. Unfortunately, people, being the sheep we are, believe this BS without ever checking the facts. (Maybe that is what the purveyors of these lies are hoping for).

Now let me say here that everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion, but they are not entitled to make up his or her own facts.

So with that in mind, here are some facts which can be backed up simply by spending a few minutes on the computer. (But who wants to waste time fact checking when all one has to do is lie with authority). Heaven forbid that reform opponents actually check facts!  The World Health Organization ranks the United States 37th in overall health system (above Slovenia but below Costa Rica). We are 72nd in level of health, 24th in life expectancy, 32nd in health distribution, 1st in responsiveness (lots of emergency rooms), 19th in child well-being, 37thin infant mortality land 54thin fairness in financial contributions. Does that sound like the best system in the world. And to achieve these poor levels of care, we spend more per capita that any country and more of our gross national product than  any place on earth except the Marshall Islands. Sounds like the best system in the world to me, NOT!

Another tactic the anti-reformers like to use is to say they don’t want a bureaucrat deciding what care we get. All insurance companies have a bureaucrat who is only concerned about the company’s bottom line. They decide if a procedure or a medication will be covered. Why do you think the doctors have to call for a pre-authorization? More BS from the right.

Another question, why do you think the Insurance Companies are against a government run plan? They would have to, horror of horrors, compete for your business. Oh, and to answer the critics who think the government can’t run a health care program, who runs the military health care system? It has some flaws, of course, just like any other system, but I have never met a military family who was not satisfied with their level of care.  Another anti-reform statement put to rest.

Here’s another good one! Keep the government’s hands out of my medicare! Huh???? If this is not a stupid statement, I’ve never heard one. Who do you think is  running medicare now?

The Republicans have said the government has no business making health care decisions. The should stay out of people’s lives. Remember Terri Shiavo? The Grand Old Packyderms were sure quick to get into that arena. I guess they don’t think people will remember that.

One of the most bogus statements I have heard regarding health care reform is that the plan has “Death Panel” who will decide if Grandma lives or dies.  Where on earth do these people get ideas like this? And besides, these decisions are already being  made on a daily basis throughout the country by doctors and families.

The bottom line here is to do nothing is insane. People in the richest country in the world should not have to decide between food and medicine. They should not have to worry about having to file backruptcy because of health care bills. And contrary to what the anti’s say, some of the uninsured are in that position not because they didn’t try to help themselves, but because the cost got to extreme and their employer dropped coverage, the company moved outside the US and they lost their jobs and many other conditions they had no control over. It makes my blood boil when I hear an anti accuse the uninsured of  causing their own problems.

In closing, I have a simple solution to the problem—–Congress can give us the health care plan they have.

Bobby Parrish