Health Care And Medical Insurance What To Do?

After having medical insurance through my employer for over 25 years, I am soon approaching either not having health insurance or paying outrageous premiums. Now, since I was employed for over 20 years, I qualify for "retiree" rates if I want to keep the insurance coverage (medical & dental) that we have had minus vision. Back in February, my wife called and got the following rates for "retiree" medical and dental insurance... For myself, my wife and dependents the medical is $10,323 per year and dental is $1,366 per year. Why we don't have the option for vision is beyond me? I can do without the vision, my wife qualifies for eye exams through the medical but our youngest needs glasses and does not qualify under medical. Back to the cost, the medical and dental comes out to $11,689/year or $974.08/month! At this point, I am not sure where the money to cover this is going to come from and we can live without it either? I recently went to eHI (e Health Insurance), plugged in our information and was shocked at the figures that I found and did not find. For years, we have paid a little extra to get a lower deductible and co-pay ($300/per person or $600/family, 10% copay for doctors and 20% for hospital or non-doctor office), a PPO plan (through Blue Cross Blue Shield) that allowed us to not have to deal with typical HMO problems. Back to the quotes from eHI, the top 3 least expensive and the top 2 most expensive plans:

Company	Plan Type	Deductible	Co-pay	Office Visit	Monthly Payment
BCBS TX (Hospital Only)	PPO	$5,000	20%	Not covered	$195
United Health One	Network	$10,000	20%	Not covered	$279
BCBS TX (Select Saver)	PPO	$5,000	25%	25% after deductible	$317
United Health One	Network	$500	20%	$35	$1,478
Celtic	Indemnity	$500	20%	20% after deductible	$1,525

I don't think that either my wife or myself would ever be picked up with any of the companies that I have listed or the rest that I did not list. Even though I had cancer over 16 years ago and am considered "cured" most insurance companies would consider it a "pre-existing" condition. Then there is my wife, she has numerous pre-existing conditions. Several years ago she had one of the "most treatable" Thyroid cancer's and has a 5 year cure rate(she is 1 year short), Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Anemia (they have still not found the cause of), Pre-Diabetes due to Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and Hypocalcemia due to surgery for the thyroid cancer. With all of that I doubt that anyone would write a health insurance policy for her. With my wife, she has three doctors that she has to see every three month which winds up being average once per month. Then during the school year when our youngest is in school she is at the primary care doctor every month to every other month. Most of her medications are fairly inexpensive but, there are so many the cost will add up without any type of insurance.

No matter what your views are on President Obama's health care reform, something desperately needs to be done with the US health care system! The way that the system is currently set up is not working. Our oldest child is married and her and our son-in-law both have good jobs with health insurance. But, their problem is that for the most part they don't get sick very often and never seem to make their yearly deductible. So, most of the time they wind up not going to the doctor unless they can not get rid of their cold or virus and then pay 100% out of pocket since the deductible has not been met. At this point I am just completely disgusted with all of it.