Health Care for Everybody! (Eventually)

San Francisco opened enrollment in its universal health care plan yesterday. The press releases tauted the July starting date, but now that it's July it turns out the plan is only open to people who already use a couple of particular free clinics. Then it will be open to people who use all free clinics, then not until January will the plan be open to people like me who just can't afford health insurance but aren't checking in to SF General every week. So basically the plan is not covering anyone who isn't getting free health care already.

One of my writer's organizations finally expanded their health care plans outside of NYC so I called them up. For any of the plans I can afford, there are discounted doctor's visits and prescriptions and then rates for all sorts of different hospital and emergency care. The thing is they all have deductibles and maximum pay-outs. If I understand it correctly, a trip to the emergency room would involve a co-pay on each part: the ambulance, emergency room care, hospital bed, and services. If you add it all up, you've got several thousand dollars' worth of bills. I only have a few thousand dollars in my savings account, so I would be broke after a hospital visit after paying a couple hundred bucks a month for the privilege. The alternative is not having health insurance and having to declare bankruptcy from a hospital visit anyway. Either way, I'm broke at the end.

Both options are just terrific.