Health Insurance on $83 a day

My husband and I are those "small business owners" politicians love to pretend they support. And since they're so determined to protect us from the evils of "European-style socialized medicine," we subsidize our friendly for-profit health insurance company to the tune of $2,510 a month, before co-pays, meds, etc.

Yup, that is over $30,000 a year, for a basic HMO, for two non-smoking people.

(No, my new job won't come with health insurance benefits, either.)

We're looking at cutting it down by taking on deductibles, higher co-pays, higher costs for medicines, hospital admissions, etc. We might be able to get it down to about $22,000 that way. 

Pretty soon, my (ancient) husband can go on Medicare. But for people age 54 and under, which includes me, our politicians are talking about changing that, never mind we've paid into it all our lives. Well thank goodness they aren't socialists, right?...

Anyway, I just found out I'm going to need a biopsy. On the one hand, we're finally getting something for what we pay -- um, yippee? On the other hand, if I were actually to get sick, the friendly for-profit insurance company might decide to drop us, or at least raise our rates even higher. 

I think I feel sick.