How health insurance reform affects you

Take an interactive quiz @ nytimes.com to find out.

The most encouraging thing to me about the bill is that it takes some modest steps toward reigning in the insurance cartels. The most discouraging thing is that most of those steps don't take effect until 2014. Thankfully, the requirement that insurers cover children with pre-existing conditions goes into effect in 6 months. Too late though to help our son who was denied coverage earlier this year due to the "pre-existing condition" of mild anemia -- a condition very common in breastfed babies. Thank you Cigna. I haven't yet seen if this bill addresses the discriminatory way in which insurance companies underwrite policies for women of childbearing age. Hopefully it does. In order to get insurance for my wife that covers prenatal care and labor and delivery I have to put her on my employer-provided high cost, high deductible group insurance plan because we can't afford the cost of a "maternity rider" in the individual market.

On the cost side, I have serious doubts whether this grab bag of measures will "bend the cost curve" as Democrats have promised. Nor am I sanguine about "reform" that continues to let third-party insurance companies dominate the healthcare market. I've said it once and I'll say it again -- real healthcare reform means cutting the legs out from under AetnaBlueCrossBlueShieldCignaUnitedHealthHumana, and decoupling health insurance from employment. Some form of single-payer would do that. Perhaps this bill will move us in that direction. Only time will tell. A little over a century ago there was another monopoly that got filthy rich by dominating a huge chunk of the American economy. The Standard Oil Trust was broken up by a courageous Republican named Teddy Roosevelt. I hope I live to see the day when the health insurance behemoths go the way of Standard Oil.

One more "for what it's worth" and I'll leave off my venting for more pleasant subjects. An aspect of the new law that's causing a lot of angst is the requirement that all Americans buy some sort of health insurance (again, this doesn't go into effect until 2014). I wonder, how is this more alarming than laws requiring every driver on the road to buy auto insurance? Just a thought . . .


UPDATED 3/23: Here's a wonderfully worded prayer about ultimate health care from Pastor Scotty Smith.