The new health insurance law has me all tangled up in knots in unexpected ways.

Today I joined the ranks of others who have been denied health insurance due to pre-existing conditions, and I feel somehow demeaned. Gross. Unworthy.  Perhaps the executives at Big Insurance would like to redline me, as the characters did in Water for Elephants?  Just throw me off this train, and there will be no need for health insurance.

The entire process of applying for private insurance was cumbersome and intrusive, and now I learn jumping through those hoops was all for naught.  At least for me.  I am grateful that the rest of my family were approved.

I’m convinced that health insurance is a giant racket.  It’s like the mob.  (Will I get in trouble for writing that?)  In a real life example….I had a series of MRIs done to determine the source of some issues.  The imaging company billed my insurance $8000 for those MRIs.  Yet the mob (oops, I mean my insurance company) told the imaging company that they would only pay $1000.  Because they are the mob (I mean, Big Insurance), they get to dictate the price that they pay.  Everybody else who does not have any affiliation with the mob (Big Insurance) has to pay full price.

Now I’m in that boat.  How did this system get so messed up?  Why are indigent people being forced to pay full price while those who have income and insurance get to pay less?  I know the new law addresses some of these issues, but it’s not clear to me at all where I’m supposed to go from here.

When my Cobra coverage expires, I will not have insurance because nobody wants a high-risk person like me. So the logical course of action is to just not be covered.  I will just rely on God to be my health insurance company.  If it’s His will that I am well, then I’m well.  If it’s His will that I’m sick, I’m sick.  If I get sick enough to die, bring it on.  I know where I’m headed anyway.

Oh wait!  I don’t have that option anymore.  It will soon be illegal for me to not have health insurance…even though I tried to give Big Insurance Company A my money to insure me, they denied me.  I’m too tired, disgusted, and wrung out to attempt to go through this same process all over again with Big Insurance Companies B, C, D, all the way to ZZZ.  Jumping through hoops is not my cup of tea. So I guess I’ll just pay the TAX since I can’t get anyone to take my money for a premium.  Is that the way it all works?  The law is so convoluted, I don’t even know where to begin finding out what to do.

So I won’t.  At least not today.

Remember how people paid Doc Baker in Little House on the Prairie?  I long for those simpler times when people didn’t have health insurance. They paid their doctors what they could afford.  Sometimes it was in gold.  Other times payment came in the form of a side of beef, an apple cobbler, or a ham!

Because I need to protect my health, I’m going to go now and take a nap to undo the knots in my neck and back.  It’s ironic that this health insurance fiasco is almost going to be the death of me!