Explanation of Benefits

“In this world, you get what you pay for,” Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut.

Well...not necessarily. When it comes to health care, we pay huge premiums every month for a service only to "haggle" for discounts and write-offs as well as financial assistance when a loved-one is seriously, chronically and/or terminally ill. 

Are you freakin' kidding me? 

No wonder we need 'billing advocates" to protect us while the system profits from our misery. Consumers are thrown into the middle of a power struggle between medical professionals and insurance companies for ultimate control of our destinies just due to getting sick--and old if we are lucky enough to live that long. 

Oh and don't even get me started on EOB's. Without recourse, patients and/or their caretakers are compelled to check pages of "Explanations of Benefits" for mistakes by insurance companies, hospitals, or doctors, having zero accountability. 

Considering the high cost of monthly premiums, THERE SHOULDN'T BE ANY MISTAKES. Sadly, public and private sectors, individuals and families, all are required by law and/or circumstance to invest a significant chunk of change to sustain the sub-par status quo of insurance companies and health care "professionals." 

Forever abdicating control, most Americans excuse this insanity because that's the way it's always been. When are we are going to say, "Enough already"? We seem to be very quick to judge social service programs and "the government" while giving a pass to the private sector as if it were any better, including but not limited to the big business of health care. 

Why don't we hold the private sector--specifically the health care industry to the same standard? It's as if most Americans blindly trust the juggernaut of capitalism seeing ourselves as players, not victims. It's about survival of the fittest, after all. 

Unwittingly, we set ourselves up for failure through nothing more than bad luck--medical expense bankruptcy looking more like a viable option albeit viewed as as a sign of weakness for everyone except the upper 1%. In spite of doing everything right, we have failed somehow if we struggle to navigate and/or worse afford " the system"? 

Yet it is "they" who have failed us. Why do we keep feeding the beast to sustain itself only to drown us in debt? Even after investing thousands perhaps millions of dollars over a life time, it's simply not enough to defray the outrageous cost of getting sick and staying alive. Nothing like a catastrophic illness to check us back into that grim reality. 

Traditionally, Americans believe money equates power. The truth is that very few of us have that kind of financial freedom and stability. So we become victims of an anachronism, caught in a twilight zone through no fault of our own. Sooner or later, we will all have to play the game with the house set-up to win nearly every time. 

Are we so entrenched in politics that we can't see what is happening until it happens to us? And rest assured, it will happen to every single one of us eventually.