I’ve decided to post the problems when I see them: gaping, unjust elements of our healthcare system that need to be fixed. Now if we could just have a few politicians believe in doing the right thing no matter who donated cash to their political party machine… anyone… Bueller? I’ve decided not to put out possible solutions on the same post, but hope to come back to this later. I would love to see comments, though, with your ideas.

If you have recently graduated from college, but haven’t gotten a job yet, and you may even be doing a volunteer year or two with any number of NGO’s or the Peace Corps, and your insurance expires, then you literally have no options for health care except the emergency room in many communities. You don’t qualify quickly for any Obamacare options, and you can only jump on your parents plan if they have good jobs and you are under 26. Let’s say you did get a good job: most insurance doesn’t kick in until 3 months, and for the best jobs a few weeks. People I know have offered to just pay cash up front for an appointment to fill out a doctor’s waiver for travel or doing a work project and could not find anyone to do the work, as the many corporate owned primary care or urgent care centers don’t take cash. Does that make any sense? NO.

What is driving this system? Insurance companies and large healthcare corporations do not create systems to pay cash. You are either on the inside with your high payment Blue Cross Program, on the periphery with your Medicaid/Medicare plan that they have to accept, on a difficult to navigate HMO, or out of luck despite the fact that you can pay and are healthy.

Concierge medicine has stepped in to fill the gap, but only for the upper 30% of the income earners who can pay up front and monthly, and plan ahead.

This is a hug problem and it is not just college students. There is a large segment of the population who is retiring before 65 when they can access Medicare, and cannot afford gap insurance, Cobra, or they have to wait until they can sign up for an Affordable Care Act plan. These folks may not be retiring because they want to NOT work (those lazy people). They are often laid off, are medically retired, or had a job they can no longer do because it is so physically demanding (landscaping, construction work, and many other manual labor jobs).

This is just frustrating.

We have engineered this for ourselves, America. This is a top down problem, and appears to be a growing black hole.