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What is it about health insurance that is so different from other insurance?
My adventures with various forms of insurance may be illustrative. Nearly 30 years ago, I was managing editor of the local newspaper when we got sued for libel.
Our libel-insurance company dispatched two excellent lawyers, who got the case dismissed by the district court in Cañon City. The dismissal was appealed clear to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the dismissal was upheld. No problems with that insurance.
Back when computers were much more expensive, I had a
policy called Safeware.
I once tried to connect a
serial cable between two machines that had different
electrical grounds. Sparks flew, and about $1,700 of gear
got fried.
Safeware came through, just as it did later when a laptop died. We took it to the local dealer, who shipped the laptop to the manufacturer, which filed for bankruptcy just after the machine arrived, putting it into an inaccessible legal limbo.
So far, so good on insurance.
In 1983, a front wheel came off our car while we were driving up I-25 to Longmont from Denver. We lurched to the roadside, but the wheel kept rolling, crossing the median before it hit an oncoming car, causing $700 in damage but no injuries. My insurance paid for the repairs.
Auto insurance is pretty good stuff.
Several years ago, when we still owned a rental house, a woman stumbled on its sidewalk. She called and said she'd wrenched her knee and cracked her dentures. I told her to mail me a letter.
She asked why, and I told her that using the mails to defraud was a federal crime, and this would encourage truthfulness. The letter came, I took it to my insurance agent, and she got new dentures.
Homeowners' insurance also covered the damaged personal property when a daughter's college dorm room flooded, and repaired our roof after a hailstorm.
Now to health insurance. When I ventured into self-employment in 1983, my accountant explained that if I got health insurance in my name, it wouldn't be tax-deductible. But if I made Martha my employee and she got family coverage as a fringe benefit, then it was a deductible expense.
So we got a family policy with a high annual deductible. One of our daughters fell in the parking lot at school. Soon her right arm was purple. We went to the emergency room for an X-ray.
Nothing was broken; the arm was bruised and swollen and soon healed on its own. But we were out a hundred dollars. We filed paperwork with the insurance company -- not in expectation of repayment, but just to have the medical cost applied against the deductible.
The insurance company fought that non-claim every way it could. We should bill the school, they said. We should have gone to the doctor's office, rather than the emergency room, even though that's what his office said to do, as he was unavailable. And so on -- persistent contention over a matter that, in all likelihood, would never cost the insuror a penny.
Nor was our minor problem an isolated incident. My brother, a sister-in-law, my mother-in-law -- they've all had major problems collecting on the coverage they thought they had.
After our hassle, Martha and I decided that if this is how health insurance worked, what good was it? It certainly wasn't like real insurance, the kind that covers its customers. As far as I'm concerned, if the federal government comes up with a plan that puts every private health-insurance company in America out of business, we'd be none the worse off.
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