Dear Insurance Company ...

... I got your letter yesterday, the letter that told me that my premium for my long-term care policy (a policy I've been maintaining for a couple of decades now) is going up--a lot. In April, my quarterly payment will go from $579.87 to $811.86, an increase of $231.99/quarter (or $927.96 annually). If my eighth-grade math skills are still intact, that's an increase of about forty percent. What a nice post-holiday gift.

You probably know that my income has not gone up forty percent since last year. In fact, I'm retired. I receive a very small Social Security check each month (about $350), and my monthly deposit from the State Teachers Retirement System in Ohio has not gone up in recent years--frozen because of the stock-market shenanigans that I, of course, had nothing to do with. (Can you say the same?)

I'm betting that you're hoping that I'll drop my policy. That way you'll get to keep all the many thousands I've paid you over the decades, and you won't have to help pay for me when I find myself unable to take care of myself any longer.

This is all part of the heinous practice we have here in America of for-profit medical care. Such a horrible idea. When profit is a motive--or the motive--then the goal of taking care of people slides farther down the ladder of purpose--so far, in fact, that it can become invisible to those near the top.

I spent my entire career in a public service profession--teaching. Public and private school, public and private colleges. Profit was never an issue with me (obviously). I wanted to help people. Sometimes I did; sometimes I failed to do so. But the failures were never due to any profit-based decision I made. No, the failures were personal and regrettable. But they did motivate me to do better the next time.

I find it immoral that you have decided that as I near the time when I could actually need you, you will jack up the price with the tacit hope that I will bail. And your executives can make their yacht payments or whatever. (I'm guessing your top executives make more in a year than I did in my entire 45-year teaching career?!?)

Anyway, for now, I'm not going to drop out. I will cut back, where possible, on my other expenses. Live a bit more meanly.

Meanly. That has more than one meaning, you know?  Here's how dictionary.com puts it:

1. in a poor, lowly, or humble manner.

2. in a base, contemptible, selfish, or shabby manner.

I live one way; you, the other.

I am not going to mention your name here, by the way. That might inspire you to find some cruel reason to cancel me altogether.

No, I will not reveal your identity, for, after all, that would not be very prudential of me ...