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My birthday was in October, and a friendly insurance agent suggested that now was the time to relook at my Medicare supplemental coverage. I am 71 years old, so have had this coverage for six years, and, frankly, been pleased with the service, though not so pleased with increasing premium costs.

My premium for Plan F coverage had gone to $235 per month. So my agent friend and I sat down and looked at the various Plan F rates for a number of companies, and selected one from a different company that will be $140 per month. The coverage is exactly the same Plan F and the premium is $95 less than my current plan!

Almost more disconcerting, I could have re-enrolled with my old company, Mutual of Omaha, at $185 per month, $50 less than the current premium! In other words, rate increases had taken me to $235 over six years I started at about $140, so the increases were about 10 percent annually while the fees for new enrollments had gone up more slowly, closer to 5 percent annually. When I called Mutual of Omaha to cancel the policy, I explained this to the very nice agent on the other end (she must have heard this story before!), told her that I could have re-enrolled in her very company at a savings of $50 per month. She said she understood, but that is just the way insurance works.

It is? If so, we must all re-assess our insurance coverages and premiums every year!

Which brings me to the Drug Plan Part D of the Medicare arrangement. As I was not on any regular prescription drugs, I started with the minimum drug plan I could buy, which was about $15 a month. (I should add that there were about 70 yes 70! drug insurance options for Oregon seniors at the time. One was supposed to plug in existing prescriptions and come up with the best personal alternatives. (I wondered at the time about the seniors without computers or without someone to help guide them through this screwball process.) I have not used much of Part D, but that premium too has climbed the automatic rate ladder, to $40 per month. Re-enrolling in another plan with similar or better coverage is putting me back in the $15 range.

So this efficient private sector piece of the health care pie would have had me paying an unnecessary $120 per month $1440 for the year had not my insurance agent friend intervened. Who knows how much I have already paid in unnecessary premiums over the last six years. I forgot to ask the friendly Mutual lady why another company could offer the same coverage at her companys rate from six years ago. The way insurance works, I imagine.

I have no objection to paying fair premiums, and thus spreading the risk among as wide a group as possible. When I was young, I and my employers paid insurance premiums for services I didnt use but someone who needed them did use them, and eventually I did. Medicare and Plan F have been good to me my hip replacement cost a total of $20, that for the walker I brought home. Ive had regular checkups, some medical procedures, no major medical issues, and there have been almost no out-of-pocket expenses except for vision and dental. (I am a bit grumpy about that, because the rest of the industrial world, with mostly single payer systems, covers vision and dental, which my Medicare and supplemental dont much touch.)

Insurance companies compete and my new company might go broke with its low premiums or might attract enough new customers to make a mint. Thats part of this silly health care game we are playing. But raising rates on uncritical clients while attracting new clients with cheaper versions of the same product seems frankly unethical unless ethics is making as much money as possible for insurance company executives and stockholders.

Poor President Obama and his health care gurus, knowing that the public would not condone a single payer system, worked with the private insurance companies to design a plan that would let them stay in the game. And now, at the launch of the Affordable Care Act, with these private companies sharpening their pencils and devising schemes in which the additional enrollees and government subsidies will allow them to lower some premiums and cover existing conditions AND maintain or increase their profits, anti-government politicians and lobbying groups are blaming the government for the rocky start.

Maybe we should take a look at the way insurance works.

Main Street columnist Rich Wandschneider directs the Alvin M. and Betty Josephy Library of Western History and Culture housed at the Josephy Center for Arts and Culture, located in Joseph.