Held to answer

Happy Hour at a bar called the High Dive in Southeast Portland – what better place to apply for health insurance through Cover Oregon.

That’s where I signed up for insurance after seeing an invitation on the Internet from a group called Working America.

Within minutes of registering for a 5:30 p.m. slot, I received an e-mail from someone named Tony Cheng welcoming me to “Working America’s Health Insurance Enrollment Happy Hour.”

I didn’t get that kind of service from coveroregon.com.

Tony laid it out: “Please come prepared with all the information you’ll need to get started looking for the right health insurance: your and any dependent family members names, date of birth, Social Security numbers, information about current insurance policies, and information on your income and employment.”

While I brought the information, I wasn’t sure I would share it because I thought it might be a scam. It sounded too easy. And “Working America” is the community affiliate of the  AFL-CIO. They must be trying to drum up membership or political support, I figured.

Well, good for them. Too bad pro-life Republicans and their friends at Right to Life didn’t see an opportunity. What could be more pro-life than health insurance?

As it turned out, I ended up completing the Application for Health Coverage by candlelight at the High Dive and to the sound of Johnny Cash singing “Folsom Prison Blues.”

Meanwhile, time keeps dragging on for Cover Oregon.

This week, USA Today reported that Oregon is dead last in health insurance sign-ups as the national deadline of Dec. 23 approaches. Oregon’s deadline keeps shifting. Working America will hold its next health insurance happy hour on Jan. 13 from 1 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Radio Room, 1101 NE Alberta St.

I decided to entrust my personal information with an insurance broker that Working America partnered with at the High Dive bar, after looking around at the other 30 people who showed up for the evening. We were all in the same fix. We wanted insurance but either it had been denied us, or we couldn’t afford it.

On this night, drinkers at the High Dive gathered at the bar, but the tables and booths  were taken over by people applying for insurance (none of us drinking).

My booth mate was a 53-year-old registered nurse who had lost her insurance when she’d had extended health problems and had to quit working. Now back on her feet, she was having trouble finding a job – and health insurance.

She’s tired of hearing about all the job security that nurses supposedly have.

“Not when you’re 53. They say you’re not supposed to discriminate by age, but they do,” she said.

It doesn’t help that doctors hire cheaper medical assistants and then pass them off to patients as “nurses,” she said.

Another woman who looked to be over 50 was signing herself up. One of her daughters, who graduated last year from Portland State University with a degree in marketing, is working part-time at a shoe store with no benefits.

But her daughter qualified for food stamps, and when she signed up for them the state automatically gave her the application for Cover Oregon. She filled it out and sent it in.

“And that was it,” the mother said.

Like many people, this mother had trouble with Cover Oregon’s poorly designed Website, which the state promoted through a $21 million ad campaign.

Colleen Quinn, president of NW Benefit Advantage, an insurance broker in Portland answered questions and reviewed completed forms. Tara Murphy, senior member coordinator for Working America, handed out flyers on her organization.

They were not sure how the idea came up to merge health insurance with Happy Hour, but they found some bars were agreeable to sharing their space – and even wanted their employees to sign up.

If the intent was to reach out to younger people, it was only partially successful on the night I went. Few of the insurance applicants appeared to be under 30.

I lost my health insurance more than three years ago when I moved from Washington state, where I paid $388 a month for LifeWise Washington, to Oregon.

I thought transferring my coverage to LifeWise Oregon would be easy. It wasn’t. The company required that I reapply and then rejected me for that what they believed was a pre-existing condition. (More like a medical misadventure to me. See “Dr. Strangelove Will See You Now.”)

I then applied for Oregon’s heavily-hyped Oregon Health Plan. The Oregon Medical Insurance Pool wanted almost $200 more a month than what I had been paying LifeWise Washington – beyond my budget. I tried other insurance carriers, and all rejected me – including Kaiser.

Now with the Affordable Care Act set to kick in, I’ve been receiving repeated solicitations by post and e-mail from Kaiser inviting me to apply for an individual health plan: “Our commitment is first and foremost to your health.”

After listing all the advantages of Kaiser, the last e-mail I received closed with: “We hope you’ll take another look at Kaiser Permanente health plans today.”

Mitch Ross, Vice President of Individual and Family Plans, is awaiting my reply. Here it is: Where were you when I needed you?

As it turned out, LifeWise Oregon could have made money off of me had they transferred my coverage. In the three-plus years since they rejected me, I have had to go to the doctor only once. I paid $135 cash for that visit. I’ve saved about $15,000 in insurance costs.

Yes, health insurance can be a crapshoot. But we only seem to hear about it from the carrier’s perspective – how much they lose insuring someone who becomes seriously ill or injured.

We hear less about how much people have spent for insurance they ended up not needing. Presumably, they received peace of mind when, in fact, there is no such thing. You don’t have to look too far to find an example of someone who had insurance and still ended up with huge medical bills (like the registered nurse I met at the High Dive).

And as past experience has taught me, having insurance doesn’t always mean you will receive good health care.

Where does this leave us?

In the middle of a political issue that will, after several more years, eventually work its way out to something resembling a better situation because people are wising up.

As a New Yorker story this month noted, health-care costs appear to be coming under control. Citing a report from the Council of Economic Advisers, per-capita, health-care spending rose 1.8 percent annually from 2007 to 2010.

“Since then, the annual increase has been a paltry 1.3 percent,” said writer James Surowiecki.

The public and political debates over the Affordable Care Act are believed to have played a role.

“Just talking about medical costs, it seems, limits medical costs,” Surowiecki said.

All the more reason to bring the debate and conversation into neighborhood bars.

America has a history of revolutionary taverns.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons