Young, rich or healthy, pick any two

Congratulations, the Republicans won. The first thing they want to do is to get rid of Obama care. That should be fairly easy for them to do. Replacing it, on the other hand, is going to take hard work. Support for repeal is widespread among the incoming majority. What's lacking is any sort of consensus on what to replace it with.

I'm not going to go into any long in depth analysis of the different proposals. That information is out there and it's complicated. My reading of the different plans appear to favor the young, rich and healthy. You'll do pretty well if you have any two of those. Old, poor and sick? Too bad. There's lots of denial that's how it will turn out, but looking at the numbers, that's what I coming.

I just made my very last last health insurance payment. I had it for two years. The first year the price wasn't too horrible. The second year it went up but I continued to pay. This coming year it's getting dropped as the price is too high. In the two years I made payments I used exactly $125 in covered services. Hardly worth what I paid for it.

I've been feeling particularly mortal these days. Another of my fellow firefighters just died from lung cancer. A lot of guys I worked with died from cancer. Cancer rates in general are pretty high for firefighters. Workman's comp rarely pays the bills. They want to know at exactly which incident you came down with cancer. It's not like getting a broken leg. Cancer is often caused by repeated exposure over a period of time.

Because of that our individual insurances pick up the tab. The last guy who passed was able to get coverage at the VA because he was a veteran. They saved him from his first bout of cancer, but then it appeared a few years later in his other lung and that did him in.

Judging from past experience, I don't have a lot of hope for a decent health plan. Heck, even though I'm on a medical disability from the fire service, they don't have to cover related medical costs. They found a loop hole where they admitted my injury was job related but didn't have to cover it. That sounds unbelievable -unless you've had dealings with insurances yourself.

My guess is that any new plan is going to have all kinds of loop holes for people to fall though. I'm not going to argue about it. Just remember my words six months down the line.

-Sixbears