Worried I May Have To Give Up Health 'Insurance'

Apparently there's some crap afoot. They are going to jack up the prices anyway, but they really promise to jack up the price if I don't go for a 'wellness' appointment. A long time ago, I went to a doctor because I was in pain. They tested a lot of things, and said all the test came up fine, but obviously you are still in pain, so we'll just call it xyz syndrome.

Then there were, of course, offers for drugs that don't do anything good, unless you are Big Pharma, in which case those drugs would have almost certainly caused me to have symptoms for which they have a plethora of other drugs.

I got tired of the appointments scheduled every three months, the offers for flu shots, and an ever growing collection of 'patient declined' on a really crappy and misleading record.

So, I started going to the gym. I figured out how to get blood tests for the things that worry me.

And they are telling me to go get this wellness crap again or I get to pay an extra $100 a month. This is completely stupid. The insurance company has been making money off of me for years. I am a net contributor.

Additionally, when you look at what they are doing, well, they are going to increase their costs, because, when the doctor gets a person in the door, that doctor is going with the standard of care. He's going to dole out some sort of drug- usually statins or blood pressure medication- and most people are not going to be well informed enough to say no. So you increase the number of prescriptions, increase the number of side effects, and increase the insurance company's costs.

There's more I don't know about yet. Usually benefits just roll over; now we have to meet with someone to talk about something. The only reason I kept it for the past few years is because I'd prefer to have it if I ended up in an accident or something.

I'm still in pain, but I'm stronger. I don't seem to have to be out of the office anywhere near as often as my colleagues.