Welcome to Free Tim

 Glad to have you aboard.  This forum has been in need of new blood for some time.  It seem hard to believe that Uncle Ken and I have been doing this for ten years, but we have.  Funny, we weren't that close in high school, but by now I cherish his friendship, even though we often disagree.  

After the paper mill closed, my wife and I were without health insurance for about seven years.  Then we had it when I worked for the schools, and then we didn't have it for about four years after that.  The only severe health crisis we had was in 2008 when I came down with a bleeding ulcer and was hospitalized for several days, two of them in intensive care.  I was retired, but not on Medicare yet.  What with follow up visits and some expensive dental work, our health care costs added up to almost $20,000 for the year.  I don't remember what the cost of insurance premiums would have been if we had it, but I remember calculating at the time that we paid our medical bills with the money we saved by not having insurance for those four years.  We got a 20% discount from the hospital because we didn't have insurance, and a 10% discount on most of the other bills by paying them as soon as they came in.  Our dentist routinely gave us breaks on his work for the same two reasons although, come to think of it, this has not been the case since he retired and turned the practice over to is daughter a few years ago.  We never asked for any of those discounts, they just gave them to us of their own volition. 

Back in my paper mill days, I still believed that They were all in it together, companies, unions, governments, and any other institutions that were always telling people what to do.  I figured that, since They were the ones that wanted us to have insurance, They should pay for it.  

 "Charity wards?  Why not bring back the poorhouse?" - Uncle Ken

I have heard bad things about both charity wards and poor houses, but at least people were taken care of in those days.  What do you want for free?