Closing the Loop

So I went to our benefits fair yesterday to talk to the health insurance people. The woman was pretty funny. When I mentioned the PR blurb that came out letting us know that patients would now be responsible for 20% of their health care costs she just laughed and said, “Yeah, some crucial information was probably left out of that statement.”

It turns out there is an out of pocket maximum. Granted, while they’ve designed that number so most patients will slowly make their way toward it over the first couple of months of the year, in my case I’ll hit it as soon as the bill for my first infusion is processed.

But at least I’m not going to be responsible for covering 20% of the cost of a year’s worth of cancer care. It’s interesting. Back when Obamacare was being litigated there was all this talk about how patients need to have more skin in the game so that they’d make more cost-effective choices about health care. It seems a reasonable assertion. But in my case, there are really only two choices vis-à-vis care: get treatment, to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars a year, or don’t.

And if it turned out that I truly had been responsible for 20% of the cost – if I had more skin in the game – I have to admit that definitely would’ve affected my treatment decisions: I would’ve completely stopped treatment.

I wonder if that’s what the advocates for “more skin” intended.