Ideally, this post would be an intelligent and informed commentary on greedy corporate America and how it affects the lowly people and their pockets. However, my intelligence is questionable and I’m not quite informed on the world of economics to discuss how this hurts our pocketbooks. What I am is a sarcastic and bitter critic of everything, and comments whatever comes to my mind regardless of things like actual facts and statistics.

After months of my health insurance company not giving me a straight answer on my appeal for the claim of “why do I owe $700?” and finally my bill going into collections as a result, it led me to wonder why I even bother with insurance. Granted, living in Massachusetts makes it cheaper to pay $700 a month on insurance than it does to pay the fine and not filing taxes. It does work out in the end as what could’ve easily been a $2000 bill, might only cost me $100 in the end since my deductible is slowly reaching its limit. Even still, I couldn’t help but to wonder why something like a single blood test costs $800, or how can you pull a kleenex out of a kid’s nose with a pair of tweezers and have it cost $400. I’m sure I could’ve taken it out of my son’s nose myself for $1, the price of tweezers. Maybe the problem isn’t that insurance costs so much, maybe it’s because the doctors and labs charge an obscene fee for seemingly simple things. Greedy doctors or greedy insurance companies or a combination of the 2? Does it really matter? It still hurts as you write out the check for the bills.

Then, there are student loans. In a previous post, I went off on a rant about the incredible rudeness of these loan companies and the fact that their interests rates are more than my husband’s car interest. I’m sure it also was a commentary on how they were pissed I was off by 5 cents on one of my payments. When you’re complaining about 5 cents, you really are greedy. They gave me the best news this week though, by lowering the monthly payments on 2 of my loans. Sure, it may only be $10 I’m saving a month, but when you consider that’s a box of diapers every month you get excited. I hope this isn’t the calm before the storm though, the idea of Senate not getting their heads out of their butts worries me because I don’t want my interest rates to go up as a result of our government being morons.

I could be missing the big picture by saying these companies are greedy. Maybe they have costs I don’t understand, that doesn’t count the big wigs of these companies clearing millions of dollars every year. I could just be a cynical bored housewife, or could I be right that these companies aren’t getting increased expenses but getting increased want of a nicer lifestyle at the costs of the lowly people bordering middle class and poverty. I’m all for a free market and people making it without having to apologize. Hell, I want to make it and have a fortune at my disposal, and I think most people in my position agree. What I do wonder is if maybe those big corporations are parasites living off us. With that logic, why do we complain about our money going to welfare people to live off of while we fund all these rich corporations to?