YES, I AM! Disgusted, that is.

First of all, with the pitiful behavior of SOME of the citizens of this good Country. For cryin’ out sideways… do we REALLY have to resort to throwing bricks AND BULLETS through windows? Threatening our representatives? Vandalism? All over a piece of legislation that takes some folks out of their cushy little comfort zone?

I, for one, would have liked to have seen a bit MORE radical thinking in addition to reining in the health insurance industry. In many ways, I CAN see the advantages of going to a “single payer system”, such as used in Scandinavia and Europe (my fear, though, is that the “US of A legal eagles” would insist upon raping & pillaging a system model that actually works into something that doesn’t even resemble that from which it was modeled).

My own irritation arises from my current experiences. Delphi, in their infinite greediness, chose to turn their backs on every Salaried individual who has worked/retired/or leaves a survivor-of-one-who-died-while-in-their-employ and just totally wash their hands of continuing to provide any health benefits (and for the retirees, pensions!). That left the retirees (last year) and us Survivors (this year) scrambling to line up health insurance. The Delphi Salaried Retirees Association (www.delphisalariedretirees.org) so far has been doing a fabulous job advocating for the retirees (I’m just hoping that there’s some positive fall-out for us Survivors) and getting an alternative health care program going for those retirees. Us Survivors don’t have that kind of “oomph” behind us… we don’t have the same kind of network to work with (and there really cannot be THAT many of us).

Anyway, just today, I got the notification of what it’s REALLY going to cost to provide health coverage for The Nook and me… over $600/month. Almost 3 times what my part of the premium was when Delphi was still “subsidizing” health care for *three* of us (Nook, Valdemort, AND me). Thank goodness Valdemort has some form of coverage thru her Graduate Program…. and at least this $600/month is less than half the cost of what Delphi had threatened as the premium previously (when they’d originally included me in the same class as the “Retirees” last year).

So, you ask, what is my opinion of “Health Care Reform”? First, it doesn’t do enough FAST enough; second, it isn’t radical enough. Finally, it really DOES need to become a “Single Payer System”. Why? Because then, we are all under “one umbrella”. No one has to deal with arbitrary “pre-existing condition” determinations. The “risks” are spread out over the entire nation’s population. I do not like the idea of “exchanges” set up for each state; we are all subsidizing the entire country, why not have one “insurance agency” to manage the entire country? “Free Enterprise” in this industry has not worked; it’s only succeeded in screwing over the holders of Individual Plans. Personally, for the “risk” that Nook & I may be, $600/month is - IMHO - too high a premium.

Yes, I am angry.

But, I am also held hostage. Yet, this hostage also feels extorted.

Sounds like a paradox.