Want some McSurance with your Fries?

Slate has a fantastic article on so-called "mini-meds" that are not quite full health insurance but more of an "insurance" on paper.

McDonald's offers hourly workers at its 1,500 company-owned restaurants four health-insurance options... Only one of these options (annual premium: about $6,000 per year, obviously more than most hourly workers can pay) is "comprehensive" (i.e., real) insurance. The other three are mini-meds. The cheapest option (and the one nearly all its hourly workers opt for) cost $710 per year in 2008... and had an annual benefit ceiling of $2,000. The other two options cost $1,332 and $1,947 per year and had annual benefit ceilings of $5,000 and $10,000.

...the sliding premiums for the three insurance options available to corporate suits and some restaurant managers but not to hourly employees actually begin at levels below those paid by hourly workers for mini-med plans even though the suits' policies contain no annual benefit limits. That's right. Some nonhourly employees at McDonald's pay less for their real health insurance—with no annual limits and, indeed, an employee out-of-pocket maximum of $4,000 for covered expenses—than the schmucks shoveling French fries and flipping Big Macs pay for fake health insurance with annual benefit limits of $2,000, $5,000, and $10,000, and no employee out-of-pocket maximum for covered expenses. Oh, and the absolute highest health premium the suits might pay ($1,435 for higher-earning employees in the "no deductible PPO") is less than a quarter the premium McDonald's expects the schmucks to pay for the only policy hourly workers can opt for that isn't a mini-med.

Much more in the article available here.

So the question is, is mini-med better than nothing? I say no, absolutely not. Here's why (from article):

Rockefeller answered with the analogy of a car whose brakes don't work 10 percent of the time. "Your brakes have to work all the time," he said, "or else you're not going to drive the car." The point he was trying to make, however awkwardly, was that it's no use saying insurance works out really well for the 90 or 98 percent of policyholders to whom disaster doesn't strike if it works out really badly for the 10 percent or 2 percent to whom disaster does strike, because the main reason we buy insurance in the first place (Duh!) is because we might end up being that 10 percent or 2 percent.

That point was driven poignantly home by Eugene Melville, a witness who works part-time for a big-box retailer that he declined to identify. Melville, who choked up several times in the hearing room, said he purchased through his employer a mini-med policy from Aetna with a $20,000 annual limit. In July, Melville said, he went to the doctor "for what I thought was an injury from a car accident." The doctor noticed a lump in Melville's neck, ordered up a biopsy, and diagnosed Melville with oral cancer. Melville figured he had close to $20,000 left to spend on the recommended treatment, but he quickly learned that within that $20,000 ceiling there were smaller ceilings—$2,000 on hospital lab tests, surgical supplies, and drugs; $2,000 for outpatient treatments such as chemotherapy—that effectively prevented him from using his mini-med insurance at all. Eventually he enrolled in a program for the medically indigent that did not offer the surgical options recommended by his doctor. The kicker, Melville said, was that Aetna sent him a letter suggesting that his oral cancer was a preexisting condition.

It's simply criminal. The minimum wage is $7.25. Working 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, that's a gross income of $15,080. Pay some Federal Income tax, state income tax, Medicare, and FICA, and you might be lucky to take home $1000 a month. Pay rent, utilities, etc, and... well, you see where this is going. Either offer a real plan that can be used, or don't offer anything at all. The illusion of insurance is probably the worst. It's like thinking Santa really exists. You could say they know exactly what they're getting into, to which I reply, when was the last time you read and can recall every detail of any of your insurance policies?

Next time you order a double cheeseburger and large fries, think about that, will you?