Let's say your on your 13th hour of clicking away in the cockroach infested Paul Weiss basement, and you suddenly experience a sharp radiating pain and tightness in your inner chest. You know that document review increases your likelihood of deep vein thrombosis, and you are keenly aware of the fact that two of your colleagues recently passed away from massive coronaries. What do you? Do you go to the hospital?
Let's see. Worst case scenario, you at least have your trusty agency health insurance to fall back upon. The firms/agencies may be stealing away 80% of your salary, and the ABA may be allowing biglaw to treat you like a bunch of subhuman day laborer miscreants, but at least you have your health insurance and free Hudson pizza on Thursdays! Surely, those hundreds of dollars that get taken out of your paycheck every month must be good for something.
Let's examine a typical plan.
Robert Half Legal offers the Aetna Affordable Health Choices BenefitsPLUS Group Plan. Suppose, you need a simple stent and angioplasty, a single day procedure that generally runs in excess of $50,000. You breath a sigh of relief, until you actually read the terms of your shitty health plan. After a $200 deductible, Aetna will only cover $250 for a night at the hospital, $1,500 for surgeon fees, $250 for the anesthesiologist, and $1,000 for "other hospital services," whatever that means.
If you decide to go through with the procedure, you will essentially be responsible for the entire hospital bill, and you can count on being stuck for several more years in document review hell, in order to pay it all off. And, this isn't even all that serious. What if, god forbid, you contracted cancer, or needed open heart surgery? It's a horrible thing to consider, and enough to make someone want to go off to the bar, get inebriated, and just hope that one doesn't wind up like their colleagues who were carried out of the basement and placed in a mortuary.
