Montana millionaire buys trophy health insurance policy
May 11, 2008 | Filed Under LOL Feature Stories (satire), Blog | No Responses
On this spring day in mid-May, as the sun begins to melt the snow on either side of a winding private road in Paradise Valley, Montana millionaire Slade Cogwell has agreed to let us inside his palatial health insurance policy. It’s a view that most Montanans would envy, and not too far from this trophy policy an altogether different scene unfolds. In a trailer park off Highway 89, Mary Grey is changing the bandages on her husband Don’s near-crippling leg wound, suffered when Don fell from the roof of their outhouse as he attempted to reattach the roof after it was blown off by the wind.
No such triage afflicts the Cogwell home as we park under the massive log portico and are greeted by Slade himself. He is at the door faster than you can say “Accidental Death and Dismemberment Supplemental Insurance,” and eager to show off the policy he bought with the executive compensation package he received when he left Bear-Stearns.
Slade decides to start our tour with his $2 copay clause, and we have to admit we are immediately impressed. No one could miss the elegance and scope of this part of his McPlan. But not even this entry to his policy could prepare us for what lies within. Full dental coverage! Four bitewing x-rays, periodontal scaling and root planing, and gingivectomies grace this part of Slade’s plan. For sheer opulence, this seems impossible to top. And then we see that Slade has coverage for all emergency room fees and a vision package with free Lasik procedures and non-prescription sunglass coverage. No wonder Slade has a perfect set of teeth and 42 pairs of sunglasses!
[Cogwell home interior at right: We thought the McMansion was swank until we saw the Cogwell’s health McPlan. Their McPlan dwarfs every other health care structure in the neighborhood.]
Who could help but feel a twinge of envy? In fact, if we had health insurance we could be sick with envy. The Grey family isn’t envious either. They can’t afford it.
Don Grey is 48, and because of his age and a brief asthma attack in 1965, his health insurance would cost $4365 a month with a $7500 deductible. So when he fell from that outhouse roof, he and Mary opted for homegrown care. Said Mary, “Well, we keep some old fishin’ line around–never know when that might come in handy–so I stitched up the leg 
as best I could.” Then she refinanced their home, and with the proceeds bought some Bacteen, and with what was left, replaced the hammer Don dropped into the old one-seater when he fell.
[At left. Don and Mary Grey’s home. The equity came in handy when Don fell from the outhouse roof.]
The Greys, who are the kind of fine folks Hillary Rodham Clinton would call “hard-working white Americans with really dangerous pre-existing conditions,” can take some comfort in knowing that they are not alone when health problems arise. Nearly 170,000 Montanan’s don’t have health insurance either.
Log home image from http://log-homes.thefuntimesguide.com/ Seriously: http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/04/09/news/mtregional/news07.txt
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