{"id":331,"date":"2013-09-25T15:54:24","date_gmt":"2013-09-25T20:54:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/?p=331"},"modified":"2013-09-25T15:54:24","modified_gmt":"2013-09-25T20:54:24","slug":"the-200k-lesson-i-learned-from-getting-shot-salon-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/?p=331","title":{"rendered":"The $200K lesson I learned from getting shot – Salon.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\tTweet<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div><\/div>

**Originally Published on Salon.com**\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>The $200K lesson I learned from getting shot – Salon.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

How a health insurance check sent 6 hours before being shot saved my life. And what it means for you (and America)<\/h2>\n

BY\u00a0<\/span>BRIAN BEUTLER<\/a><\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, I\u00a0wrote an essay<\/a>\u00a0for this website about the time two young black men shot me in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the article was to bring a new and personal perspective to an ongoing debate about racial profiling that had grown particularly pitched at the time.<\/p>\n

This article is a preface to that story, which I hope will serve a similar purpose, but with respect to a completely different debate.<\/p>\n

Right now, a number of conservative groups, with financial backing from well-heeled fellow travelers like Charles and David Koch, are engaged in a campaign to convince young, uninsured people not to enroll in Obamacare \u2014 to remain uninsured rather than enter and strengthen the state-based health insurance markets the Affordable Care Act is building.<\/p>\n

Young people are typically healthy. On average, they incur very low medical costs each year. In any social insurance system, most of them will end up paying in more than they get out during their early years, because most people make it through youth without contracting a major illness or befalling terrible accidents. Yes, they get healthcare coverage, and the peace of mind that comes with it. They also enter a social contract that promises to provide them affordable coverage when they\u2019re older and no longer healthy, as a form of back payment for cross-subsidizing today\u2019s aged and ill. But in the near term, and in the narrowest, most pecuniary sense, a system like Obamacare won\u2019t necessarily seem like a great deal.<\/p>\n

Adults will make their own decisions. My story underscores the moral failings of the people attempting to persuade strangers to assume a risk like uninsurance for the sake of their own dubious principles.<\/p>\n

If you read my original article, you already know I was shot three times in the early morning hours of July 2, 2008. What you didn\u2019t know is that I\u2019d put my first insurance check in the mail on the evening of July 1, 2008.<\/p>\n

Back in 2008, I was pretty new to journalism. I had a decent job, and crucially the first one I\u2019d been offered since I\u2019d graduated college that agreed to pay part of my insurance premiums. But I was working on a contract. I wasn\u2019t on a group plan. On top of my monthly salary, my employers would send me extra money to pay my monthly premiums.<\/p>\n

I know from that, and from previous experiences, how frustrating the existing individual insurance market can be. Even a highly regulated one like Washington, D.C.\u2019s. Before that job, I\u2019d been insured in D.C.\u2019s market once before, with a really lousy high deductible plan. Like most young people I rarely needed it, but when I did, it didn\u2019t seem to cover much, and appealing charges was a significantly less rewarding experience than getting cable installed or fighting traffic tickets in court.<\/p>\n

When I got that job, I tried enrolling in a new plan, but for some reason \u2014 perhaps because I hadn\u2019t kept continuous coverage \u2014 I was rejected. Over my father\u2019s pleading, I allowed these frustrations to deter me from applying for a different plan. I pocketed the supplemental check each month for several months before his persistence wore me out and I fired up ehealthinsurance.com. Fortunately, D.C. required one of the major insurers operating in the area to offer a guaranteed issue plan, which meant they couldn\u2019t reject my application. It also meant that I\u2019d only be eligible for, or be able to afford, a high deductible plan once again. A few weeks after applying, Blue Cross sent me my plastic insurance cards and my first bill. I don\u2019t recall what day that bill was due, but I do recall that I was an enormously irresponsible young adult and an inveterate procrastinator, so I\u2019m quite confident that I held on to that bill for a while.<\/p>\n

On July 1 \u2014 I must\u2019ve just received my paycheck \u2014 I bussed up to Cleveland Park, a quiet neighborhood in Northwest D.C., to meet my sister and brother-in-law for a celebratory dinner. They had just moved back to Washington after many years, and this was the first time she and I would be living in the same city. I met them at their new condo, with an envelope in my back pocket, we walked south down Connecticut Ave toward the restaurant, but before we reached our destination, I dropped the envelope into a corner mailbox.<\/p>\n

Six hours later two EMTs wheeled me into a trauma center.<\/p>\n

My medical bills totaled about $200,000, mostly attributable to major surgery and a 10-day hospital stay. My deductible more than cleared out my bank account, but in the end, my insurer paid almost every other penny, and saved me from bankruptcy or a lifetime of debt. For $200,000 you can buy an Ivy League education, a home, a law degree, a secure retirement or a splenectomy. But there\u2019s no equity, dividend or residual value in a splenectomy.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know how much difference that scary (but extremely fortunate) timing made. It\u2019s possible my insurance would have covered my bills even if I hadn\u2019t mailed the check that night. But that\u2019s sort of beside the point. The point is that I\u2019d just enrolled in insurance I never thought I\u2019d need, and then unexpectedly needed it \u2014 badly \u2014 just a few days later. It cost me about $100 \u2014 about the amount millions of young people\u00a0will be asked to pay out of pocket<\/a>\u00a0under Obamacare. Two-thousand-to-1 is a pretty good payout.<\/p>\n

If I\u2019d been uninsured at the time, I might have had a few meliorative financial options. I\u2019m fortunate enough to have parents who could have cushioned the blow, though not without considerable hardship. Maybe I could have split my debts between them and the hospital. What I couldn\u2019t have done is applied for insurance from my bed in the recovery ward and asked Blue Cross to pay for my surgery post hoc. That\u2019s as it should be. Insurance doesn\u2019t work if it\u2019s structured as a bailout system for free riders. Yet one thing these conservatives are telling young people is that Obamacare will be different. Because it guarantees that people with preexisting medical conditions can buy insurance, they claim opting out carries no risk. Get sick or injured? Then you can reconsider your decision to opt out.<\/p>\n

But this is a falsehood.<\/p>\n

For the first year, Obamacare will have an unusually long open-enrollment period. It starts on Oct. 1, but eligible individuals can sign up through March, even if stricken by accident or illness. After that, though, anyone who decides, or is persuaded, to \u201cskip\u201d Obamacare will be as vulnerable as I would\u2019ve been if I\u2019d never applied for insurance and dropped that check in the mail. They\u2019ll be locked out of the system until the next open enrollment period begins on Oct. 14, 2014. That open enrollment period will last just 53 days. Break a leg or develop a serious illness in the interim and you get to choose between paying tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket or suffering for months and rolling the dice with a delayed diagnosis.<\/p>\n

Nine months after the shooting I got a new job that offered me traditional employer-sponsored insurance, and for the past four years I\u2019ve been fortunate to maintain at-will employment in a competitive industry like journalism, because it turns out being asplenic is a preexisting condition. One of the less obvious consequences of serious accidents is that victims often become uninsurable on the individual market as a result. Freelance work just wasn\u2019t an option for me.<\/p>\n

Obamacare really will change that. But only if it works. And it won\u2019t work if too many young people decide to roll the dice.<\/p>\n

One of the arguments I made in my first essay is that it makes no sense to respond to minor risks by taking drastic measures (in that case, I was responding to making sweeping racial judgments based on a lone incident). Nobody should respond to the threat of communicable illness by sheltering indoors like Howard Hughes. Nobody should mitigate the risk of accident by diminishing their quality of life. But buying insurance? That\u2019s like taking a cab through a dangerous neighborhood. It\u2019s a perfectly sensible hedge even if it\u2019s somewhat costlier than the alternative. If it weren\u2019t sensible, millions and millions of people insured by their employers \u2014 including, probably, the same people now encouraging young people to skip Obamacare \u2014 would be opting out in exchange for additional cash compensation.<\/p>\n

Obviously people who have insurance already \u2014 including young people, who currently cross-subsidize their older colleagues in existing group markets \u2014 think it\u2019s a pretty good deal. If you\u2019re eligible for Obamacare, and people try to convince you otherwise, ask yourself if you think they\u2019d be giving their own children the same advice. And your decision will be obvious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

**Originally Published on Salon.com**\u00a0 The $200K lesson I learned from getting shot – Salon.com. How a health insurance check sent 6 hours before being shot saved my life. And what it means for you (and America) BY\u00a0BRIAN BEUTLER A few weeks ago, I\u00a0wrote an essay\u00a0for this website about the time two young black men shot me in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the article was to bring a new and personal perspective to an ongoing debate about racial profiling that had grown particularly pitched at the time. This article is a preface to that story, which I hope will serve \u2026 Continue reading this post → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[70,68],"class_list":["post-331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health_care","tag-healthcare","tag-obamacare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":332,"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions\/332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.themodestproposal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}