Health care outside the veal pen

A few months removed from the simplicity of employer provided health care, where the sum total of many people's medical insurance experience consists of complaining about the increase in premiums every fall and occasionally switching doctors when the medical plans are changed, my wife and I now find ourselves lost in the labyrinth otherwise known as the U.S. private health care system trying to select a new plan that we won't come to regret a year or two down the road.

It's a good thing they have that COBRA health care continuation program.

After living in a veal pen for twenty years it'll take you at least a year and a half to figure out how to fend for yourself in an increasingly complex world of increasingly complex choices that somehow only seem to benefit those in the health care industry and that small percentage of the population with serious medical conditions.

Cartoon by Tim McCracken

For most of the healthy people in this country, we'd probably be far better off if we were forced into some sort of a plan where the only recourse was to complain loudly about the system.

The alternative - being inundated with a bewildering array of choices and options and fine print and caveats - leaves you convinced that even if you could devote every waking hour to analyzing all the options available, you're still going to end up choosing the wrong plan.

Carried to its logical conclusion, the number of choices available in the Western world for all manner of consumer products will probably, at some point, cause all economic activity to cease, except of course for government and those companies toiling to provide an even greater selection to the consuming public.

If anyone has any advice on scoring some reasonably priced health insurance in California, please post a comment or send me mail.

Thanks.