Weak Ass Position on Gay Rights

Love one Another

John 13:34-35 "I give you a new commandment: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my diciples, if you have love for one another."

No Matter What - We Will Win, Hate and Ignorance will lose.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Health Insurance

All my life I worked for companies that offered excellent health insurance. When I left the last major employer I worked for I was able to use “COBRA” and when the eighteen months was over I was able to convert to an Individual Policy, which was fine until I moved to Florida. My insurer, US Healthcare, did not offer individual policies in the State of Florida so I had a choice, I could continue to maintain a permanent address in Pennsylvania or seek health insurance in Florida. Of course, maintaining an address in Pennsylvania would have been tantamount to Insurance Fraud and being a law abiding citizen that was not an option.

To complicate things my life partner was also on my Health Insurance policy so when we moved to Florida we were both in jeopardy of losing our health insurance. So we did what most people would do, we applied for health insurance first with Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Florida. We were both denied, me because of high blood pressure which was being treated, and my partner because he had once indicated that he had a “fever blister”. While I would never ever be able to prove it, in my heart I am certain that we were profiled as being gay, since we applied together, and in the eyes of Blue Cross/Blue Shield a certain indicator of a potential risk that they were not willing to take.

Then we took another route and applied with “Golden Rule”, separately and were accepted. At the outset the premiums were reasonable but accelerated faster than the Space Shuttle. I then reapplied to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, separately, and somehow slithered into their program which again was reasonable initially but like “Golden Rule” they accelerated the premium as well as the deductible, so I eventually had to join the other forty million Americans and just do without health insurance.

I guess the reason I felt compelled to write this is because there was a Blue Cross/Blue Shield advertisement on DIGG. I went to the advertisement to check it out and they were offering pretty much the same rates that they offered me a few years ago, the same rates that after six months went up, up, up and up and the deductible also went up, up and up until I could no longer afford them.

When I was in my late twenties, thirty plus years ago, the Vice President of Human Resources for the company that I worked for, SUN Oil Company, gave a talk about the issue of health care. He was not much older than me at the time but when I look back I think that this was a man of vision, unlike many of the men and women who today, occupy the Halls of the United States Congress.

Once and for all, with the Republicans or not, we need a “ONE PAYER” system in the United States that in time will take the profit out of life and death.

Bart

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