HMO

People have been talking a lot about the health care industry lately, can’t imagine why! Professional scolds where aghast that so many citizens didn’t even need to guess at the motive of someone who brazenly gunned down the CEO of a health insurance company. We immediately understood how a person could be driven to the extreme of shooting someone on 5th Avenue* and not lose any support. We were supposed to blame mental health! Or the parents! Or video games!

I’ve thought the health insurance industry was evil pretty much as long as I’ve been a self-employed adult. In fact, I wrote a song on the subject back in 2000/2001 and it’s on my album Living it Down, which came out in December of 2001, 23 years ago this month.

Before the ACA, aka Obamacare, I bought insurance on the individual market, which was a freakin’ nightmare. Now it’s a slight tiny bit better, but by no means anything I would call “good” or “humane.”

And as hard as it is to get and keep health insurance, using it is even more absurdly ridiculous and confusing. For every procedure or visit, you get a letter called an “explanation of benefits” that doesn’t actually explain anything. Then there’s my favorite: the “past due” bill—which is the first one you’ve seen in 4 months—from some janky sounding office out on Long Island that says they did something at your last procedure and you owe them 50 bucks. Was this printed on a dot matrix printer?! How the hell do you still find paper for that thing?

Dealing with an industry whose objective is to return value to their shareholders at the expense of the wellbeing of their customers is, and has been, maddening. And just because it’s been this way long enough for me to have a nearly 25-year-old song about it, doesn’t mean it has to stay this way.

*OK Fine, it was technically 6th Ave, but you get my point!