Fear the Cowboy

In my previous life, I was self-employed in Canada, for about 15 or so years.  Now, the Great White North does have Universal Heathcare, but there are limits to what it covers.

Doctors, hostpitals, tests, treatments, * ?... Yes. Medicine (prescription drugs), dental, vision, midwifery? ... No.

That and a few small things is why I was paying for supplemental health care in Canada. Not too much, but I just wanted to make sure that I had the coverage that I needed.

Health care in Canada is funny. Given that it's paid for, you still get the amazingly lousy results. Even to see my GP, I'd have to wait a week to three weeks. Any Specialist? Weeks to months. Book Ahead.

When I came to the US, I was a tad fearful of the healthcare coverage... after all, I'd been born and bred under the flag of universal healthcare (thank's Tommy!) .  Lucklily, Microsoft has their own brand of Universal healthcare, and I gotta say, it rocks.  We pretty much don't have to worry about anything healthcare related whatsoever.  Moreover, we have access to the one thing that Canada still doesn't have: Healthcare service of the Gods.   I had visited my doctor over the course of a few years in Canada to deal with recurring lethargy. (Hard to beleive, if you've ever been near me :D ) I went through test after test, tried this that and the other thing, all with mediocre results.

My first month here, I found a doctor who said it sounded like I had sleep problems, and got me to go get a sleep-study done. I called up the sleep clinic, and found out that I could get in that night--That was weird, I had never gotten such fast access to healthcare services in my life.  So I went in, did the sleep-study, and found out that I have sleep apnea. So, they fitted me with a CPAP breather for night-time, and whoosh! Suddenly I was feeling like a million bucks.

Now, in order to keep us aware of these costs, Premera sends us a statement for every single treatment we get done. This accomplishes two things: First, it lets us check for fraudulent billing, and be able to report it. It's my company's money, I don't want to see it stolen!. Secondly, they keep us aprised of the costs of our healthcare. I was suprised to find out the cost of the sleep study and the CPAP hardware, but for me, it's worth it.

For Microsoft, it's worth 100x that. I'm MUCH more productive than I've ever been, and they are seeing the benefit of spending the money.  You could say that it's good corporate citizenship to take good care of your employees, but I think it's more than that. It makes good business sense. If your people don't perform at their best, what can you do to get them there. Labor is the highest cost of business, and we've got a lot of it.

I shudder to think of working in the US without that fantastic coverage, and what it must be like for the hundreds of millions of people who's company isn't footing the bill. I'm not an much of an activist, and I can't recall being much of a tree-huggin' lefty, but I think that large companies where CEOs and execs get hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation, should provide that universal healthcare to all their employees. It makes good business sense.

Labels: fearthecowboy, health care, Microsoft