May the Schwartz be with you

Selling policies to individuals was riskier and less profitable than selling group plans. When we tried shopping around there was no competition on premiums and plans, all were ridiculous. We paid what we had to, taking a pretty big hole out of our small business’ profits. 

My friend couldn’t get anyone to cover her. She got really sick and the hospital bills literally bankrupted her. She and her husband struggled to get back on their feet, working any jobs they could get, barely making ends meet. Two years later I got an unexpected phone call from her as she lay dying in the hospital. “Call my husband” she implored me. I did. He told me that despite feeling sick for a few months, she hadn’t wanted to go to a doctor because they had no insurance and couldn’t afford to pay out of pocket. Finally going to the emergency room they discovered that she had advanced lung cancer and my dear friend was gone a few days later. I miss her terribly and will never get over how angry it made me that in one of the richest countries she was denied coverage because she had a pre-existing condition and died because she was poor. 

This was all before the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was born. My husband and I were able to go onto a local exchange, CaliforniaCare, and there were at least four companies offering three levels of coverage from which we could choose. There were subsidies based on income and if you were too poor to afford any plans you could sign up for Medicaid (in many states).

Before Obamacare, 16% of Americans lacked health coverage, 8% today. Yes, Obamacare has its flaws. Subsidies disappear if your income is “too high.” There are no subsidies today if a family of four has income of over $128,000. As Ezra Klein correctly notes in his book, Abundance, solving social problems with subsidies often causes prices for the things being subsidized to go up. So, not a perfect solution but to be fully transparent if it weren’t for those subsidies my husband and I might have had to give up our small business and go back to working for corporations. I’m sure you won’t be surprised that I believe we should be like the rest of industrialized countries and offer cradle-to-grave universal single-payer (the government) health care. I believe there should be sliding-scale co-pays and that wealthy people should be able to pay privately for whatever special levels of care they desire, concierge doctors and luxury hospitals for the rich are fine with me, just give the rest of the 98% of us high-quality care and the rich can eat as much cake as they want! 

But that’s not where we are going. Instead, starting this December the Republicans have made the ACA harder to enroll in and more expensive and are slashing Medicaid by $800 billion after the mid-terms. They’re dismantling what’s working without offering an alternative. Too many people will suffer and die because of inadequate coverage. Congress can reverse some of the damage they’ve done but we may have to flip the majorities to Democrats to do so. Let’s get to work. May the Schwartz be with us!

Craig Wiesner is the co-owner of Reach And Teach, a book, toy and cultural gift shop on San Carlos Avenue in San Carlos. Follow Craig: craigwiesner.bsky.social.