Obama

[Alex]

More personal (and I mean more personal): My coverage at the time meant my total cost for my vasectomy was around $80. Back when I was uninsured in college an unneeded trip to the emergency room to be told I had a bad cold cost $1,200 total for 40 minutes of time.

And yet with what is supposedly very good dental insurance I spent almost $2,000 to get my wisdom teeth removed.

Though in the absence of comprehensive insurance/health care reform there is one law I'd get behind:

1. If you have insurance and use medical services that accept that insurance then all bills and negotiations should go through the insurance company. They can haggle about what will be covered and not and then the insurance company pays the doctor/hospital everything and seeks to collect the remainder from me. Lani needed a small procedure last year and insurance covered most of it but we received about 6,000 separate bills which we dutifully paid and then got refund checks on a third of them because the insurance company also paid them.