Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Greg Knauss describes his son’s $23,800 bug bite, and why Obamacare (and thus this coming election) is important.

This is how medicine is supposed to work. Everybody has been kind and patient and our stay has been nothing but reassuring and comfortable. Alerts were raised when they should have been, and professionals acted accordingly. Score one for the American medical establishment.

The bill is $23,800.

I’ll have to have to pay less than 6% of that, because I’m lucky enough to still have insurance.

Two years ago, the company I worked for up and skedaddled — that’s how you say it, right? — to Texas, for a “better business environment” than you can apparently find in California. I think that means that the CEO doesn’t have to pay state taxes and is allowed to hunt low-level employees for sport. I’ve been working as an independent contractor since — and having a good time doing it — but I haven’t been able to find private insurance. Everybody loves the small businessman, the fabled self-sufficient entrepreneur, unless he’s got a history of kidney stones and a ruptured disc and, delicately put, a “problematic height/weight ratio.” They didn’t say which way it was problematic, but I think it’s insurance industry jargon for “Tubby McLardass.”

But California — in an effort, no doubt, to discourage business — lets former employes extend their COBRA coverage for an additional 18 months after the federal limit runs out. I’m paying the full premium, but I and my family have insurance.

It’s good, I suppose, to be reminded that although President Obama has been so disappointing in so many things I care about — torture, drone killings, Guantanamo, stimulus, bank fraud, immigration (until election pressure got to him) — things could be even worse.

But the Republican convention just finished up, and tens of thousands of people gathered in Tampa to cheer every mention of reversing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The PPACA is how literally tens of millions of Americans can avoid having a bug bite wipe them out financially.

Uniformed troops are out of Iraq, although that has at least as much to do with the Iraqis kicking us out as it does with the Administration’s determination to leave. We did get almost a quarter loaf on health care, and the cause of gay rights has advanced.

Spotted via rc3.