For Frying Out Loud (21 page)

September 2009

HEALTH INSURANCE ISN'T INSURANCE; IT'S PRE-PAID HEALTH CARE

Suppose that slimy Geico Gecko charged you, every year for your premium, the amount it would cost to buy a brand new car. Would that be car insurance? I think not.

Consider it in terms of this whole health insurance boondoggle and see why I have to go with my gut here.

My gut requires very little care and I can eat (and, of course, have happily eaten) pretty much anything without requiring a prescription medication. But because once, a millennium ago, I thought I was having a heart attack, which turned out to be gas, I am considered high risk for digestive issues and almost uninsurable.

Oddly, this was just academic for me a month ago. While I myself had employer paid insurance, I very much favored an expansion of Medicare as the new “public option” for those people not as fortunate as I.

How quickly things change. Now I am without any employer paid coverage and must venture into the mythical “open market” for
individual
health insurance. News flash! I cannot get any. That's right, as an individual I am totally uninsurable because I am fat and over 60. And I'm not even the 800 lb woman on
Discovery Health
every night.

Even people we consider to be trim and shapely are over the weight limit imposed by most insurers for individual coverage. I don't know about you, but I've earned my excess pounds with some pretty heavy carbohydrate loading. I'd hate to be working out like crazy and eating whole grains and
still
be considered too fat for insurance.

I may, however, be able to get insurance through my business, A&M Books, so here's what I found out. The problem is not health care; it's health insurance, a completely separate issue. And most people, along with politicians, pundits and
pontificators are conveniently forgetting that fact.

There's nothing wrong with the health care I get. Love my doctor; happy with my choices of practitioners in the Rehoboth area. This dire crisis is
NOT
about doctors, end of life decisions, abortion, death panels, illegal aliens, deficits or all the other apple scrapple folks are trying to shove down our sore throats.

No, it's about access to affordable health insurance and unless you are a 27 year old Olympic athlete who's never even had a hangnail, insurance companies don't want any part of you. And if they do want a part, it's an organ that has never hiccupped. What organ would that be, our stiff upper lips?

Here's a dirty little secret. Insurance companies are no longer even selling health
insurance
, a product which involves a large enough pool so the risk of covering old sick people is outweighed by the reward of covering young healthy people. No, they are peddling pre-paid health
care
, an entirely different product. The paradigm shifted while we weren't looking.

Insurance companies no longer accept risk. They don't want no stinkin' risk. If you are 60 and fat and will need a colonoscopy and a flu shot in the next six months your premium will reflect exactly what they expect those things to cost.

My business has been quoted $900 a month for a policy for one employee, me, with a $5000 deductible. If I pay $900 a month for a year, plus my $5000 deductible, I am paying $15,800 (a year!) before the insurance company takes even the slightest risk. Meanwhile, they are raking in money from me and that healthy young buck requiring not so much as a tongue depressor.

I'm risking that my health care will cost more than a new Lexus, otherwise I'm just paying insurance company CEOs, lobbyists and favored candidates when I could just be paying the doctor or the hospital directly. This is insurance?

Okay, so you get this, right? If the insurance behemoths do want you, they want to make damn sure you pay them enough to actually fund all the MRIs, doctors visits, prescriptions and
tests that a person your age will likely have. It's like pre-paying for your funeral – and under this system we are lucky if one doesn't turn into the other.

Now doubtless some folks will argue that my health care could cost more than $15,800 a year if I get really, really sick. But isn't that the kind of risk the insurance company should take in order to profit from some lucky jerk who pays money year after year and never so much as sneezes?

And how ‘bout that lower-cost government option that teabaggers, blow-hards, and legislators yelling “Liar!” think will turn us into a third world communist country? We all see that public education has killed private schools and universities. And Medicare put all the big insurance companies out of business, too. Puleeeze!

Tomorrow I have to call around for more health “insurance” quotes. I can picture it.

“Hello, you have reached Giveusyourwalletincorporated.”

“Dial 1 if you are old and fat.”

“Dial 2 if you have ever belched.”

“Dial 3 if you were seen by a doctor coming out of the vaginal canal.”

“Dial 4 if you think we paid off enough legislators to keep it business as usual.”

Mel Brooks or Allan Sherman, or some funny guy wrote new lyrics to the song “Blue Skies” and called it “Blue Cross.”

       
(sing it with me…)

       
Blue Cross
,

       
said I would be

       
happy that

       
Blue Cross
,

       
covered me
.

       
Then I took a fall

       
leg in a splint

       
they said that I

       
should read the fine print
.

       
And when a high

       
fever I ran

       
they said that I

       
bought the wrong plan
.

       
Oh Blue Cross
,

       
there seems to be

       
plenty for

       
Blue Cross

       
nothing for me
.

Pray for Obama Care.

October 2009

MARCH ON!

I hope some of my friends went to DC for the October 11 Equality March and marched for me.

When I heard about the October 11 national march I was terribly disappointed. Bonnie and I and the pups were in P-Town for Women's Week doing book signings and having a grand time. Who the heck scheduled the march on a day when thousands of East Coast lesbians would be heading for Cape Cod???

Dammit, I haven't missed a gay march on Washington since I came out of the closet in 1980.

For the first national march, in 1979, Bonnie was there in my place only she didn't know it. We hadn't met yet. In the midst of my coming out angst, I hungrily read all about the March but didn't have the guts to go.

1979 was the first nationwide march but it, like all marches following, was highly controversial. Maverick gay rights activists wanted to pressure Congress and the Carter White House; more conservative activists thought it would accomplish nothing but incite backlash. Both were right. Pressure was applied – a great deal, and very visible. But soon, like Anita Bryant getting a pie in the face, came the backlash.

The second national march was October 11, 1987. By then I was queer, I was here, I was not only used to it, but wondered what had taken me so long. Bonnie and I, in our late 30s had been together five years, parenting our first Schnauzer.

That day on the Mall, according to the
New York Times
, drew about a half a million people. It was the start of the great estimate wars between the Park Service, organizers and the media. It sure felt like a half a million marchers supporting gay rights and demanding action from the Reagan administration in the fight against AIDS. The event also included the first public display of Cleve Jones' NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt.

It was a day of highs and lows: incredibly happy among my peers but remarkably sad to walk silently, under threatening skies, between panels of the quilt, stopping to, quite literally, read it and weep. How and why did this deadly epidemic target such bright, warm, loving people? And how dare the police on horseback guard us by wearing rubber gloves and sneering. Of course, the photographers snapped just the drag queens and dykes on bikes while the contingent of gay business people or PFLAG parents would never make the news.

Bonnie and I, quite amazingly, ran into Marge, a dear, long lost friend of Bonnie's in the half-million throng. We knew other friends were on the Mall, but with cell phones yet to be part of our consciousness, we couldn't find anybody.

By the April 25, 1993 National March a lot had changed and a lot hadn't. Organizers estimated 1,000,000 attended the March, but the National Park Service estimated attendance at (duh) 300,000. We lined up at the Washington Monument early in the morning. Our Maryland contingent didn't step off to march toward the White House until afternoon because locals (MD, VA & DC) go last. We missed all the speeches on the Mall since there were a million freakin' people ahead of us! I'm swearing by the organizers' count.

The ‘93 marchers were pissed at Bill Clinton and Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but we were also celebrating things like more religious organizations hosting same-sex commitment ceremonies, the possibility of marriage equality in Hawaii (that went down in flames!) and more and more public acceptance of gay relationships.

Again, LGBT (although I cannot remember whether T was added to the acronym by then or not) people poured out of the metro stations, restaurants, hotels and stores. Downtown Washington looked like a night at a dance club. Yes, there were demands for equality, yes, there was reverence and sadness for the people we lost, but yes, there was also tremendous optimism and slogans to make you laugh and cry. We marched chanting “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Homophobia's got to go.”

Again, Bonnie and I walked with our posse, minding our own business, when we drifted past the California contingent, and who do we run smack into – Marge from Norfolk. Go figure.

Fast forward to the new Millennium and the Equality 2000 March. Crowd estimators jockeyed between 200,000 and a million, and there were celebs galore with a sold out Equality Rocks concert the night before. My favorite posters were
Focus on your own damn family
and
Respect is not an agenda
.

We cheered Vermont's contingent and their new civil union law; college and high school groups, churches and synagogues, happy dads and cheering kids with the sign
Men With Strollers
, gay veterans and more. I think we cheered that we survived the Y2K scare.

The difference from prior marches? While there was still plenty of wonderful diversity, there was far less spectacle. Where once the Park Police wore riot gear and rubber gloves, this time they strolled their steeds through the crowds, chatting and visiting. And everybody and their grandmother had a cell phone.

We thought a lot about those who marched in ‘79, ‘87 or ‘93, and who were no longer with us, felled by AIDS or other deadly illnesses. We were getting older. In fact, our crew dropped in and out of the march several times, resting up on the sidelines. Still marching after all these years.

But we were there.

And we missed this one. I hope Marge was there. But since hey, hey, ho, ho, homophobia still has to go, I guess there will be another and these old dykes will get to march again. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

What do we want? Marriage Equality! When do we want it? NOW!