A typical experience with the individual health care market:
I have commented before on the problems with central planning in health care. I certainly am not convinced that a government-run system is the answer, but I do agree with Krugman that there are serious problems with our health insurance system, particularly in the market for individually-purchased (non-group) coverage.
After my husband quit his job earlier this year (to become a full-time stay-at-home dad), we had a choice. We could either buy health insurance from his former employer through a program called COBRA at a cost of more than $1,000 per month(!) or we could go it alone in Maryland's individual market. Given our financial circumstances, that “choice” wasn't much of a choice at all. We had to go on our own.
We discovered that the most generous plans in Maryland's individual market cost $700 per month yet provide no more than $1,500 per year of prescription drug coverage–a drop in the bucket if someone in our family were to be diagnosed with a serious illness.
With health insurance choices like that, no wonder so many people opt to go uninsured.
The mystery writer? Michelle Malkin. As I've said before, if a neoconservative is a liberal who got mugged, and progressive is a Republican who got sick. Well, a Republican who got sick, but whose livelihood isn't dependent on generating an unending stream of outrage for a hardcore conservative audience. But can you really believe that the Michelle Malkin who wrote those paragraphs is the same one inveighing against subsidized health care for children of low-income, self-employed parents?
