So I don't know about all of you, but I'm pretty sick of terrible healthcare in the USA.

So I'm starting this thread for all of us to rant about our personal issues with healthcare. I'll be writing my rant into it's own reply later (it's a bit of a long one), but I wanted to start the thread now to give others a chance to start venting.

Rules of Rant Thread:

1. Don't argue a rant
2. Thread is likely going to be incredibly USA-centric. USA healthcare is assumed unless stated otherwise.
3. Rants should involve people no more than 2 degrees of separation from yourself. This thread is to vent about your personal experiences, not hearsay from total strangers.

In order to foster further discussion, and include those without a rant: Here are some things I personally would appreciate and expect for replies, but others might not.

• Explanation of how things would work out for you if you were in a similar situation
• Advice for dealing with any ongoing or future problems

In case you don't live in the US and don't know, it is very common for health insurance to be tied to employment.

I've held four jobs over the last twelve months. Health insurance has been the most frustrating part of it. I'm married, I have kids. I don't want to go months without health insurance. My wife is self-employed so no employer subsidized insurance for her. We live comfortably so no option for government subsidized insurance.

The cheapest plan with insanely high annual "deductible" of something like $10,000 (the money you have to pay before insurance will pay) I can get independently is around $1000 / month. For comparison, with my current employer, my part of the insurance is around $440 month with a $3000 / year deductible.

During the past year I've four different insurance companies, one of them paid entirely out of my own pocket, no coverage for dental care for a while, no coverage for eye care for a while. Really WTF? Why are teeth and eyes so different from other medical care?

I'm now three weeks into my current position, insurance coverage with this employer began on the first of the month (so after about one week of working) — another gripe, the waiting periods to start coverage; my position before this had me working six weeks before coverage began; this time I had no idea when it would begin until I spoke to HR on my first day. I finally got my new insurance cards yesterday.

So today I decided to try to cancel my out-of-pocket coverage. I have until the sixteenth to cancel for this month. Haha, no. I can't. Not only are the human operators not working today (which granted is a Saturday), but the website is shut down for the weekend. I can't make any changes until Monday.

If the cost to me was the same, or close, I'd just buy my own insurance all the time instead of dealing with the hassles of constant change. But the costs are no-where near close. And I've got college tuition costs coming up very soon, so it's not like I'll have money to spare.

I feel like health insurance in the US is the worst of all possible worlds.