Shameful

There is something called COBRA (short for: The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act), which, according to the law gives "workers and their families who lose their health benefits the right to choose to continue group health benefits provided by their group health plan for limited periods of time under certain circumstances." This is supposed to be a safety net in a country where people are not entitled to being able to see a doctor if they need it (which, after all these years here, still amazes me), but of course, in most cases, it doesn't. The group health rate is incredibly expensive and I am pretty sure that most people who make an average salary cannot afford to pay even the COBRA so when they lose their jobs they just fall back on emergency room care, which in turn drives up premiums, which make COBRA unaffordable - get the vicious circle? I am lucky enough to have made enough money in the past two years so that I have enough savings to buy my family health care for $1,355 a month. (As a comparison, if I tried to get the same quality health insurance as an individual for my family, it would have cost over 2,000 dollars).

Now my law firm has gone bankrupt and the people who drove it into bankruptcy by their terrible business decisions to put all eggs in one supremely lucrative, but tenuous basket, have joined another firm and are continuing to make a lot of money. This means that COBRA will likely not survive much longer (they can't say how much longer it still would), which makes it difficult to plan for my family and to add insult to injury they have informed me in a letter Fedex-ed to me on January 31 that, as of December 31, I have to pay an extra 300 dollars. Retroactively. I have spoken with the people in charge of benefits on a number of occasions between December and now and never have they mentioned this. To state the obvious, this is a shitty way to treat your now unemployed former employees. Meanwhile, the managing partner (who managed the firm into he ground) and his buddies are still enjoying their substantial fortuned and (old-)new jobs, which provide them health insurance and job security.

We will just get health insurance in another way. I feel insecure and screwed over, but more poignantly, my own woes give me an insight into what millions, who are less well off and less educated than I am have to face. They are unable to afford healthcare and run the risk of bankrupting their families because of this inefficient and unfair healthcare system as soon as they lose their jobs. I can very well imagine the stresses they experience day after day. The system is shameful. Shameful is the word of the day.