Nine Signs Your Health Insurance Isn’t Working

Now that the country is respectively breathing a sigh of relief or throwing an fit because of the passage of universal health care, here is some bad news for the 33 million we are about to bring into the fold. Everybody gets a car doctor!

1.        You have to injure yourself to get an appointment. After  shelling out two grand on a mandatory insurance policy, your school informs you that it is an injury only plan. You bribe friends to beat you up to schedule a visit.

2.      Upon witnessing an epileptic fit on the subway, you decide to pass out next to the victim in order to split ambulance costs.

3.    Your Doctor maintains you are in perfect health.

This is despite the fact you are currently smoking and drinking 6 days a week and the last exercise you had was running to make the train to work.

4.   You swipe your rich cousin’s insurance card so you can take advantage of his Cadillac plan.

You hope the doctor’s office can’t tell the difference between two minorities.

5.  You break your ankle and require steel braces.

You find it cheaper to hire remaining family members as crutches.

6.  You find out that its cheaper to buy a ticket to Brazil and see a dentist there.

While there you discover that snake blood is an effective hypertension reliever for furious Republicans.

7.  Your insurance company informs you that unemployment is a pre-existing condition.

8.  You think COBRA is a ruthless terrorist organization who fights G.I Joe.

COBRA is actually a useless health insurance policy for recently laid off average Joe.

9. You try to pass off your priest/rabbi/shaman as a ‘faith healer’ to comply with universal coverage.

COBRA Commander is hiking your premiums

The Young Invincibles

According to the New York Times, young adults aged 18 to 30 are the single largest uninsured demographic in America; a total of 13.2 million people that make up over 1/3^rd of the total uninsured population.

The real tragedy lies however in a Pew Research study that shows our demographic as the least informed and engaged in the health care debate. This is despite the fact that we stand to benefit the most from any reform and hurt the most from failure. Most importantly, we are the ones to bear the enormous financial implications well into the next few decades.

One group that has attempted to highlight this looming problem is the national coalition of youth organizations called Young Invincibles. YI co-founder Ari Matusiak spoke about the apathy prevalent in our generation, mostly as a result of the political stagnancy of today:

Change is not easy. It comes only as a result of persistent struggle, unwavering conviction and a willingness to take risk. That is its character. In 2008, young Americans fought for this moment – this chance to make change. We believed we were sending leadership to Washington with the character to persist, stand strong and deliver for us all.

Groups such as Young Invincibles are doing an admirable job trying to involve us in the debate, but do not receive much national exposure – or even make an impression amongst its target demographic.

We are the generation that created the powerful social networking mediums that now define our culture. Facebook, Twitter and a million other tools to organize and socialize are our domain. Those younger than us are more proficient at these tools. Those older than us are more embedded in the tools of governance. But we are the creative young professionals throughout the United States that have the ability and responsibility to fashion a message and create a movement to broadcast out. These are the mediums that resonate in the American psyche, and these are the cues from which our Congress gathers their talking points.

There is a reason we are the most sought after demographic for advertisers. Popular culture is our domain, and trend-setting our calling card.  A large portion of us fought for change two years ago, and now seem disillusioned by the lack of change once we achieved our goal. It is time to realize that change is not about elections, but about building a movement and urgency in our culture that allows our leaders to implement the change. If we make ourselves heard we will insure that we are not stuck with the bill when everyone else has left the table.

Check out Young Invincibles below:

Liveblogging CSPAN’s “Healthcare & The Economy Debate”

Maria Bartiromo, the only way to get you to read about CSPAN.

The National Governor’s Association (NGA) talked on CSPAN today about Health Care and The Economy in a session moderated by CNBC anchor and Eva Mendes look-a-like Maria Bartiromo.

The session initially started off with platitudes on the terrible state of the economy from the 50 governors assembled before Ms. Bartiromo turned the conversation to health care, which seemed to be everyone’s topic of concern.

Gov. Patrick of Massachusetts got things going by explaining specifics of his state and boasting a 98% coverage rate for his constituents. He did stress that “everyone starts from a different place” and Massachusetts was already using “patches and plugs” so only 1% was added to the budget.

The Republican governors seemed to mainly stress increasing competition as the primary method for expanding healthcare. One nice touch was the Utah governor explaining that his solution was similar to Massachusetts except Utah gave its taxpayers money instead of…health care. The taxpayer was then free to shop around for health care in the private sector, like “Travelocity”, a great internet reference from the guv’nor.

Gov. Mike Beebe (D-AK) was possibly the most emphatic with this quote:

“Governors get things done. The debate in Congress so far has been about rhetoric and not policy. We have the boots on the ground. Let us get it done.”

Despite being mostly talk, what was most striking was once governors on both sides of the aisle got done scoring political points, everyone agreed four clear issues:

• Genuine frustration with the current political system and Congress for not being able to get things done.
• Urgent requests to Congress and Adminsitration to get governors involved in the health care debate as they have concrete solutions as they are the “boots on the ground.”
• Confidence in the ability of states to implement health care reform individually if Congress failed to pass a bill.

Unfortunately, Maria never got around to asking the governors if they felt a certain ex-Alaskan governor may have increased CSPAN’s ratings for this event.

Look below to see what states have already implemented healthcare reform: