Preexisting insurance

Someone with a brain, please explain all this hand wringing over preexisting conditions.  To my way of thinking, by the time you go to the doctor, all conditions are preexisting.  So I catch a cold and go to the Dr.  When I show up in the Dr.’s office, my cold is preexisting.  So WTF?  I guess there are those few who pay the deductible to sit with their doctor to tell him everything is fine. 

Dr.:  How are you feeling today Mr. Smith?

Smith:  Fine Doc.  Everything is fine.

Dr.:  Well why did you come in then?

Smith:  Well, my insurance does not cover preexisting conditions so I wanted to see you before I had “a condition.”

Dr.:  I’m sorry.  Feeling fine is also a preexisting condition. In fact, however you are feeling before you walked through the door of my office is a preexisting condition.  What you have to do is sit in the waiting room until you get sick.  Then that illness will not be preexisting.  It will have existed only after entering my office, which would make it a postexisting illness and fully covered by insurance. Why do you think it’s called a “waiting room”?  You wait there until you get sick.

Oddly, your health condition has nothing what-so-ever to do with preexisting conditions.  I think that what they are really referring to is your preexisting insurance condition rather than a preexisting illnesses. 

Imagine if car insurance worked the same way.  After dropping his beer on the floor and then driving his car into tree while trying to recover his bottle of suds from the floor, Billy shows up at the auto body shop with a wrinkled fender. 

Auto guy:  What’s your insurance company?

Billy:  I don’t have one.

Auto guy:  Well you need to get insured or you’ll have to pay me out of pocket.

Billy:  Well they won’t insure me after the accident will they?

Auto guy:  Sure they will.  They have to by law.  Your car has what is called a preexisting condition.

Billy:  Well, why on Earth would anyone buy insurance before they needed it then?

Auto guy:  Look bub, don’t complicate things.  Your car has a preexisting condition.  Call the lizard insurance guy and get yourself covered or write me a check.  It’s up to you.  And while you’re at it, you might as well take the lowest deductible possible.  Why not?  Then, once the car is fixed, you can drop the insurance.

I think you have to be a know-nothing Caligula, D.C. ruling class azzweasel to see this as a workable business model.  Anyone with a brain knows the system is going to be gamed by people scamming it so they don’t have to pay until something bad happens.  That’s not insurance.  That’s welfare.   

There are no easy answers to the healthcare dilemma.  If I were a total dictator, the world would rejoice, then I’d divorce health insurance from employment.  Wala, your healthcare is now portable.  Then I’d encourage insurance companies to make pools for people to join ranging from Cadillac to Yugo.  Young healthy people enter at the Yugo level and progress to Cadillac as they get older and less healthy.  Insurance companies are encouraged to pool certain percentages of the poor – on Medicaid.  What’s left?

Cinco de Mayo
I’ll be doing a bit of cultural appropriation tonight – celebrating Cinco de Mayo with a margarita or cervesa Modelo.