The Sickly State of Health Insurance

By Nomi Prins, AlterNet. Posted September 12, 2006.

The following is an excerpt from Jacked: How "Conservatives" are Picking your Pocket (Whether you voted for them or not) by Nomi Prins, PoliPointPress, 2006.

What do a successful ABC television producer, an ex-Los Angeles Laker turned actor, and a former meth addict turned PR god all have in common? First, they all spend way too much time in LA traffic. Second, they all think America's current health-care system sucks.

Poncho Hodges is a 34-year-old former LA Laker. He's the tallest person I've ever stood next to. I walk with him (Poncho used to live in New York, so is down with the whole walking thing) to a nearby Starbucks, on Magnolia and Lankershim Boulevard. My all-black outfit (yes, it is a New York thing) looked a little grim next to his red and white Yankee cap and red and white sneakers. His face was framed by bling studs and a thick gold chain necklace.

Poncho attended the University of Colorado on a basket-ball scholarship. He did a stint as power forward for the Lakers. He's perfectly healthy now, but having witnessed tons of sports injuries in his career, he knows the importance of coverage. "Health insurance?" he says with a voice as deep as James Earl Jones. "Been winging it."

Like other members in the Screen Actors Guild and vari-ous professional groups or unions, he gets insurance through group policies that are imbedded with obstacles. "I got the SAG one, but you need to gross like $15,000 a year to keep it. You have to gross about $25,000 to get dental."

For seven years, he played basketball all over Europe, and learned from his time there: "America needs to take lessons from other countries where if you're a citizen, you get health care, no matter who you are." Ideas like this separate Poncho from the thinking of our gov-ernment, even though he considers himself a Republican. "I like the things they stand for -- like on religion -- and I'm down with keeping American traditions. On the economic thing, it's different -- they don't care about the poor, they're too privileged." He is further proof that the need for decent health care cuts across political beliefs, and he is one more example of how out of touch conservatives are even with their own constituents.

After Poncho takes off in his size 15 Nikes, I have another latte. For this one, I'm joined by Jed Wallace, a super-lively PR person. Jed has an expensive individual health insurance plan, which also covers his two young daughters. He got it on-line. "It's Blue Cross/Blue Shield -- over $800 a month, a $10 deductible on office visits, $30 on prescription drugs, $500 on ER work, and an annual deductible of $750." Part of the reason the plan is so expensive is Jed's former ultra-Hollywood lifestyle. He craved the dream: "I wasn't exactly sure how, but my ego said I wanted to be rich and famous -- then you get pummeled by reality."

Reality for Jed started with smoking pot, then doing hallucinogens. It soon became a full-blown meth addiction. During the mid-'90s, he co-hosted a web radio spot and "Popcorn," a movie review show on MTV. He made, as he put it, "shitloads of money, burned through it, and started doing coke." MTV was short-lived, so he got into the bar business in Santa Monica. "It was 'on' from there -- partying, drugs, everything."

By April 2000, he was cruising high. The manager of one of the beer companies he bought along the way happened to be his drug dealer. "I was working 20- to 22-hour days -- I had to get into meth, the delusion that with a little, you could do anything."

He rationalized that he provided his two-year-old and wife with a home, money, and cars. He paid employees in drugs. Finally, his wife left him. Eventually she returned and created an inter-vention that led him to Life's Journey Center in Palm Springs. It was, as he put it, "a humbling experience. There, we also discovered I was bipolar -- that's why my insurance is so high."

Now, he speaks to kids in recovery through Alcoholics Anonymous. "Lots of people in treatment wind up dead, back on drugs, or in jail. I'm lucky. People helped me. 'Cause it's not covered by insurance." He's been clean for two years, having been to hell and back, and has met tons of lost people along the way. Many of them, he believes, were souls that could have been helped by wider reaching health care. "This government is totally detached from the real American psyche and spirit," he says, driving me back to my car. "You parked all the way over here?! Why?"

The next day, I hit ABC Studios, where it was definitely turning Christmas. A young intern was passing out ginger-bread cookies while I waited for Harry Phillips, a producer of Primetime. After a few minutes he arrived, a friendly man with a neatly trimmed gray beard and mustache, and offered me herbal tea from their kitchen.

Behind his desk are several bags of Christmas presents, mostly for his youngest daughter, Abigail. "She's 12 going on 20," he says. On his walls are several Emmy awards, a map of the United States, and a Norman Rockwell print of a young black girl in Mississippi.

He's been at ABC for 16 years. His health plan is through Disney/ABC, and is CIGNA/PPO, for which he pays $250 a month with a $350 annual deductible. Born in Canada on Memorial Day in 1952, he has been in the United States for 15 years but maintains dual citizenship. The biggest reason why? Yep: "Health care--socialized medicine." As far as he's concerned, Canada just flat out gives its citizens better care than we do. And it's hard to argue with him. Canada has the equivalent of an interlocking system of Medicare and Medicaid. Everyone's in the same risk pool and there are fewer administrative costs.

Nomi Prins is a senior fellow at the public policy center Demos and is the author of Jacked: How "Conservatives" are Picking your Pocket (Whether you voted for them or not) PoliPointPress, 2006.

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