Going to the doctor

Today I saw my physician for my annual physical. It had been nearly 18 months since my last one and I'd had no issues in between.

"If I were to give you a gold medal and blue ribbon," he asked, "would that tell you what kind of shape you're in?"
With all due modesty, I wasn't surprised. I began the day with a 6:30 a.m. swim, feeling fortunate as always to live five minutes away from the pool and know I have no physical limitations, whether I choose to swim, run, ride a bicycle or lift weights, my usual forms of exercise. My cholesterol levels are good, I take no medication, my blood pressure and heart rate are fine, I've never broken a bone or been hospitalized (except for that tonsillectomy when I was 2)...

So why was I turned down when I applied to increase my life insurance last year?

"Don't get me started," my doctor said. "If you see a doctor for any reason any time in the past year or two, the insurance companies will reject you." He's quit writing letters on behalf of his patients because they're uniformly ignored. He even had to go through several rounds of appeals to get his healthy 21-year-old daughter insured.

I bring all this up not to gloat about my own health but because it's so jarring, and so discouraging, to know the big picture in this country.

Today's Oregonian reported that the cost of family health insurance premiums in Oregon have doubled since 2000, outpacing increases in income by four times.

Between 2000 and 2009, the average annual premium paid by employers and workers for family health coverage climbed from $6,654 to $13,378, a 101 percent jump, reported Families USA, a nonpartisan nonprofit based in Washington, D.C. During the same period, the median earnings of Oregon's workers rose from $22,401 to $27,743, or about 24 percent. (See the report here.)

$13,000-plus for health insurance? That's obscene.

Earlier this week, my colleague Galen Barnett posted the latest raw numbers and percentages of Oregonians without health insurance:

--The number of uninsured in Oregon has increased from 430,000 in 2001 to 621,000 in 2008. The percent of non-elderly adults without insurance increased from 15.2% to 21.5%. And this number only considers people who are uninsured for an entire year -- it does not include people who have more recently lost coverage through the recession, or who had shorter gaps in their coverage.

--The percentage of people with employer-based coverage decreased from 73.1% of the population in 2001 to 69.7% in 2008.

--There were 393,000 employed workers in 2008 who did not have health coverage. The proportion of employed workers from Oregon without insurance has increased, from 14.6% in 2001 to 20.2% in 2008.

The anecdotal and statistical evidence are out there to make the point a hundred times over. Our health care "system" is broken. It's bloated by corporate profits; driven by expensive, defensive medicine; disgraced by its failure to cover more than 40 million Americans; and scandalized by bottom-line decisions that result in heartache or financial ruin for millions more.

A parting shot: Here's a link to a blog post written by a mother of a little boy with autism.
http://autism--tearsofaclown.blogspot.com/2009/09/to-health-with-it.html

AP Photo of President Obama, addressing Congress Sept. 9