Engineer’s Attempt at Writing

I am not a good writer nor am I going to be able to convince opponents of health care reform to switch sides. I am lucky enough to have a job in this economy and furthermore, I am lucky enough to have a job that provides health care insurance. I support health care reform for my own selfish reason. I do not know what the economy will be like in the next year or even next month. I always wonder what if I end up losing my health insurance, then what will I do?

When I was a student at school, I had health insurances provided by the school. Although the premium was fairly low, the coverage was appalling. First of all, I had to get an MRI once and it took over 4 months before the procedure was approved. Luckily for me, the MRI showed nothing was wrong. However, one of my lab mates actually had her MRI denied because they did not think it was necessary. My lab mate had to go back to her home country to get an MRI and the MRI caught the problem. How is it that some administrator at an insurance company know whether a MRI is necessary? Obviously the cost of MRI in the US is very very expensive. A reason is obviously that the machine is over a million dollar and someone needs to operate the machine. Another reason is that the doctor (not the MRI technician) charges an arm and a leg to look at the MRI results. This fee I can not quite understand. I mean how difficult is it to look at the MRI results and I think, the results are probably sent to India for analysis anyways. My school health insurance also has a 200K lifetime benefit. What the hell is 200K lifetime benefit going to cover in the event that I did get really sick. Considering surgeries costing over 100K, 200K lifetime benefit will allow me to get sick once my entire life.

I also think that when people have health insurance, they are more likely to get treated early on for whatever diseases they may have. If they do not have insurance, they will keep waiting and waiting until something really serious comes up and they go to the emergency room. Emergency room are super expensive. Seeing a doctor in the emergency room cost probably 10X the rate of seeing a normal doctor. This does not include any lab work or test they have to run. Some have argue that people who do not take care of themselves (i.e. people who lives an unhealthy lifestyle) will not change even if they see a doctor on a regular basis. I disagree! I think if someone like a doctor tells you that if you don’t change your lifestyle you will die, you will change your life style. A lot of people, even educated people, do not know the adverse effects of their lifestyle have on their health. Maybe it is not they do not know but they just forgets and it takes a doctor to remind them once in a while.

I am just rambling now, but I think that the bills from doctor or hospital need to be more descriptive. I read recently that there are actually professionals whose job is to understand the codes that hospital/doctors use for identifying procedures. If I should be responsible for my bill, please make it so I can understand easily. There should be a website that lists all the code and what it means. Maybe a Google translator that takes these codes and weird messages and translates it to something that a layman can understand.

I had my wisdom tooth extracted this past Thursday and everything went smoothly. I did not have any swelling and so far no bleeding or infection of any sort. However, I can’t stand that I am unable to eat food. I miss being able to eat some nice juicy steak or even something as simple as an omelet. I think starting tomorrow I can begin a normal diet consisting of soft food and I hope I will be able to eat regularly soon.

I think someone should invent something that they can put over the extraction site and so that you can eat normally.