As I indicated earlier, I believe in insurance. Honestly, it is foolhardy for a middle-class person to go without it. Yet as long as the insurers can use medical underwriting to exclude poor risks and redline preexisting conditions -- sometimes retroactively -- insurance isn't worth what we're being asked to pay.
I'm looking forward to the day when all of us will qualify for good medical insurance at reasonable prices, with a firm regulatory hand behind it. If we all have to pay into the system in order to make health reform work, so be it. I'll gladly pay if I'm assured of getting the services I contracted for.
In October, I'll hit 12 months without insurance, and I will have saved about $6,000 that otherwise would have padded the profits of the insurance companies.
Eventually, I will have some serious medical expenses, and I'll use these savings to pay them. Between now and then, I'm going to wear my bike helmet and stay off the rollerblades.
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health@latimes.com
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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)
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Health check
Consumers may want to review their health history and medical conditions before going into the market for an individual health insurance policy.
The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute website tools can be useful in evaluating your risk of a future medical event or complication.
To assess your 10-year heart attack risk, you'll need to know how you measure up in these general risk categories for heart disease and obesity-related diseases:
* High blood pressure (hypertension)
* High LDL cholesterol ("bad" cholesterol)
* Low HDL cholesterol ("good" cholesterol)
* High triglycerides
* High blood glucose (sugar)
* Family history of premature heart disease
* Physical inactivity
* Cigarette smoking
You can also determine your BMI and calculate risks of obesity-related disease.
Visit the NHLBI website at www.nhlbi.nih.gov or look up the online version of this article at latimes.com/risk calculators for direct links to the institute's tools.
Source: National Heart Lung and Blood Institute
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J. Duncan Moore Jr.
