Let me begin by saying that I am not against the idea of the government providing healthcare or providing funding for healthcare…to an extent.  It would be quite hypocritical of me to be against it completely, given that I benefited from government run insurance for the majority of my childhood.  A government insurance plan also helped me out for the first two years of my adulthood, and was mostly subsidized for two more years after that (thank you state college).  My family is not lazy; in fact, my parents run their own business, and have for 14 years.  They work hard at what they do, and have a sizable customer base that keeps coming back.  Yet, running a business (especially of the mom and pop variety) doesn’t always mean the income is steady, so government run insurance certainly helped for us kids.  As of March, I am now no longer on a government insurance plan, and enjoy an employer-based plan instead.

That said, I have issues with government-run healthcare.  I’ll cover some of the biggest issues I think the federal government might face in running a system in another article, but for now I want to focus on the issue nobody ever seem to talk about: the inefficiency of the government.

As I mentioned above, I enjoyed four years of government run of partially subsidized insurance.  However, my journey begins in the middle of those years.  When I turned 19, I found myself facing an age-based cut-off from the state insurance plan.  The Charter Oak plan for adults my state began last year was still two years away.  I feared that the school plan might be inadequate for my needs (two chronic diseases, and medication needs well over $2,000 a year).  I did not have a full time job, and the school job could never have paid for health insurance on its own.  Without a license, a lot of the other part-time jobs college kids enjoy were out of my reach.  So, I decided to apply for my state’s SAGA health plan, which was basically a stripped down version of the insurance I has previously used.

The problem, which I began to realize as I went to apply for SAGA, was that the plan is meant for people who are basically destitute.  The income limits were laughably low (believe they were about $600 a month when I went to apply).  So I could keep the school job I had, but not apply for another to save up for a car, as that would definitely put me over the income limit.  Even investments weren’t safe.  The money I had in a Roth IRA, that you normally cannot extract until a certain period of time passed?  It was fair game as well.  So much for trying to be fiscally responsible!

Faced with not being able to consider a second part-time job and having to lose my IRA, I opted not to continue with the application.  I instead turned toward the school provided insurance, which I was surprised to find carried me reasonably well for the final two years of college.

Then graduation came.  My school insurance lasted until the end of July last year.  I decided to get some doctor visits done before the time was up, thinking I was okay.  My gastroenterologist recommended a colonoscopy, a routine procedure for patients of Crohn’s Disease; even ones my age.  I thought I was okay, and even called to ask if I would be covered, and I was told I was.  Turns out I was not covered, having used up the coverage shortly before I got the procedure done.  I got lucky.  I was still at home and not yet paying rent, so I could cover it all fairly easily.

Shortly before my coverage was up, I knew I needed insurance, since I would not be eligible for employer insurance for six months.  With asthma and Crohn’s, how could I go without it?  I knew I was probably facing futility if I attempted to go for private insurance.  Reader c3 has suggested the health insurance industry has little interest in attracting individuals; they prefer the employers.  I don’t know what my experience would have been, but I didn’t want to waste time attempting it if I was just going to be rejected anyway.  Quite possibly this was a misguided line of thought on my part, but that’s how I saw it at the time.

So I applied for the newly begun Charter Oak plan.  The trouble is that if you previously had another health insurance plan (like I did), Charter Oak also has a sixth month waiting period, with an exception for special cases (financial hardship, etc).  I talked to someone at the Charter Oak office, who suggested I try applying anyway.  So I did.

I think I waited about three months before I got mail from Charter Oak again.  By then, it was a request for more information on income.  By that time I said, “I’ll take my chances for another three months.”  A risk, to be sure, since Crohn’s Disease can have complications, even if you’re following the doctor’s instructions.  However, I lasted the final three months, paying for all my prescriptions out of my pocket.  Now that I’m on my employer-provided insurance, I no longer need to worry about paying for my hospital bills.

So what’s the point behind this little story of mine?  Well, we all know how slowly and inefficient the government can work in general.  I have a co-worker who waited nearly a year before hearing diddly squat about whether or not she would be approved for a green card (she just got the acceptance letter late last week).  So if that’s how slow the federal government works in sorting out immigration issues, how quickly can we expect them to work on healthcare?

I’m not here to make the case about whether an approval for a life or death medical procedure would be based on whether a government employee took too long getting a cup of coffee.  I’m just trying to point out the load the federal government would take on if it tried to impose a government plan on everybody.  If my state had (and still has) trouble handling the relatively few people it has on the Charter Oak plan, how could we expect the federal government to handle over 300 million people?  It just doesn’t seem possible to me.