Calling Dr. WalMart

I wish my daughter had picked a more exciting subject than personal finance, like just about anything, but I'm stuck so here we go to another subject that nobody wants to do anything about (except George Bush.)  But it is the wave of the future.  And it has to do with saving money, maybe.  And it is MEDICAL INSURANCE.

And WalMart.  Well, not really WalMart but Sam's Club which is your upscale(?) division of WalMart.

Back up--a junk e-mail came across my Outlook Express.  Sam's Club Now Offering Health Insurance.  Open it, fill in a form noting age, height, sex, any really bad diseases/conditions.  Up pops another screen describing the four forms of insurance.  Read that, submit, and something sends you a price.  A price that is pretty good.  As you go further along with the process, they will ask for more medical information and eventually they will ask for permission to get a peek at your medical records.  The cleaner and younger you are, the cheaper the insurance.  Well, what's wrong with that?  Nothing, makes sense but it is not the system we use now which makes no sense.

The system we have now is based on the Big Brother system of our employer providing, at a price that has gone up a lot lately, medical insurance.  Our employer does not provide car insurance or house insurance but our employer is expected to provide health insurance.  How did that come about and why?  Get in the Wayback Machine and travel to World War II.  Labor was short because most of the male workforce was in the armed services so your grandmother got out of the house and started building airplanes, tanks and guns.  Margot's grandmother went to work in the Pentagon.  And they didn't pay her very much because wages were frozen.  So to make life better or at least tolerable, the big companies started providing benefits like, you guessed it, medical insurance.  Your grandfather came back after the war, assuming he survived, and thought that was a pretty good deal and health insurance became part of the American contract between worker and employer.

And it worked pretty well for awhile and then it broke.  And here comes WalMart. 

More on Monday as to why this issue is going to be a hot one.  A few hints--think big government, corporations looking to cut costs, fat people vs. thin people, young vs. old, cigarettes, alcohol and McDonalds.