>>>>As long as you can show proof that you have had continuous health insurance covereage, the insurance companies can not deny you coverage for pre-existing conditions. Now that employers are required to pick up the tab for 60% of the COBRA costs, it is more affordable for the people who have lost jobs to keep continuous coverage.
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>>>But don't they charge more for a pre-existing condition?
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>>>So far as 60% of COBRA costs, that could still be a lot of money for a family of 4.
>>
>>Firstly, 100-60=40. Secondly, it would be about the same as paying from paycheck in dollar terms. Beer is expensive too.
>
>Not true unless you are comparing to the employee costs in a small business which typically has no bargaining power with the insurance company. Most larger companies pay 75-100% of the medical insurance costs for their employees. In my experience, the average for a large company is 75%. The employee typically only pays 25% of the cost for the coverage and that is with no or a very low deductible and a small copay of usually $20-25 per doctor visit.

Still, the employee deduction keeps going up, up, up along with the overall cost of U.S. health care. It wasn't that many years ago when health coverage paid for completely by the employer was a fairly standard benefit.

I read an interesting article in the New Yorker the other day by Atul Guwande (probably misspelling at least one of his names), a doctor who frequently writes about medical matters. This one focused on Medicare spending, not just the sheer volume of it but the somewhat inexplicable wide variance in spending by region. He focused on an area in south Texas, near the Mexican border, where average spending per Medicare recipient per year is around $15,000. In the El Paso area, a few hundred miles west along the border and similar demographically, the average is about half that. (Which is close to the national average). He spoke with a number of doctors and hospital administrators. He seemed to feel one of the big factors is procedures that are probably not necessary. Part of that is the profit motive -- the doctors make more money that way -- and part is the CYA factor due to malpractice suits. I used to think differently but am now in favor of some reasonable kind of tort reform as part of health care reform.

We really need to do something, whether it's a government system or not. This endlessly more expensive system, which doesn't even give us better health, is insanity.

Here is the article. (And I didn't butcher his name too badly <g>) ---

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande