If the experience with Claritin is any guide, the result of it being available over the counter is that it will cost you more (though perhaps less than the combined cost to you and your insurance of the prescription version), and insurance companies will stop paying for the prescription alternatives in most cases because an OTC version is available. Everyone wins! Well, if by "everyone," you mean the pharmaceutical and insurance companies...
I have been fortunate enough only to pay for insurance out-of-pocket once, and the company I dealt with was pure unadulterated evil. (I can't remember the name offhand, and they've probably been bought by someone else by now anyway.) I was on COBRA after the company I was working for went under. They were supposed to offer a continuation of the health coverage we'd had, and instead they offered a plan that covered only emergency room and hospitalization. Apparently they were gambling that most people wouldn't read it carefully before signing. When confronted about this with the help of a state insurance commissioner, they offered an alternative plan based on the principle that the law said they can't exclude you for pre-existing conditions (and that had only been enacted a year or so before then), it didn't say they couldn't quote you outrageous rates to try to keep you out. I'll look up the name so you can avoid them.
If you're not comfortable with Kaiser, stay well away from any other HMO. Kaiser is not-for-profit; the for-profit HMOs are much more driven to keep costs down above all else. Kaiser was at least founded on the principle that easy access to checkups and preventive care can save money by reducing the need for more expensive procedures; the arbitrary cost-based restrictions that are the staple of HMOs in general came later.
<brief gratuitous political rant>
From some stuff I've read, HMOs aren't really managing to contain costs compared to traditional insurance any more. The courts have outlawed many of the more egregious denial schemes they used (which doesn't mean they don't still try them, of course), and they don't really have any other advantages. So politicians who advocate saving Medicare costs by "encouraging" more people to join HMOs are either:
a) Woefully behind the times and ill-informed about this plan's potential for success (I'm willing to give some of them the benefit of the doubt on this; I've lived in the DC area my whole life and the federal government is always several years behind the curve on most things.)
b) Free-market ideologues who know that private enterprise is always more efficient than government, and will pretend any evidence to the contrary doesn't exist.
c) Anti-government ideologues, who don't believe government should be doing things to help people, and want to see Medicare and other health programs effectively dismantled, but don't want to take the political heat of openly proposing that and learning what "regular people" really think. (Guess I should amend that to "cowardly and dishonest anti-government ideologues"...)
(Or, I suppose, d) all of the above, since they're not mutually exclusive.)
Medications and insurance
I have been fortunate enough only to pay for insurance out-of-pocket once, and the company I dealt with was pure unadulterated evil. (I can't remember the name offhand, and they've probably been bought by someone else by now anyway.) I was on COBRA after the company I was working for went under. They were supposed to offer a continuation of the health coverage we'd had, and instead they offered a plan that covered only emergency room and hospitalization. Apparently they were gambling that most people wouldn't read it carefully before signing. When confronted about this with the help of a state insurance commissioner, they offered an alternative plan based on the principle that the law said they can't exclude you for pre-existing conditions (and that had only been enacted a year or so before then), it didn't say they couldn't quote you outrageous rates to try to keep you out. I'll look up the name so you can avoid them.
If you're not comfortable with Kaiser, stay well away from any other HMO. Kaiser is not-for-profit; the for-profit HMOs are much more driven to keep costs down above all else. Kaiser was at least founded on the principle that easy access to checkups and preventive care can save money by reducing the need for more expensive procedures; the arbitrary cost-based restrictions that are the staple of HMOs in general came later.
<brief gratuitous political rant>
From some stuff I've read, HMOs aren't really managing to contain costs compared to traditional insurance any more. The courts have outlawed many of the more egregious denial schemes they used (which doesn't mean they don't still try them, of course), and they don't really have any other advantages. So politicians who advocate saving Medicare costs by "encouraging" more people to join HMOs are either:
a) Woefully behind the times and ill-informed about this plan's potential for success (I'm willing to give some of them the benefit of the doubt on this; I've lived in the DC area my whole life and the federal government is always several years behind the curve on most things.)
b) Free-market ideologues who know that private enterprise is always more efficient than government, and will pretend any evidence to the contrary doesn't exist.
c) Anti-government ideologues, who don't believe government should be doing things to help people, and want to see Medicare and other health programs effectively dismantled, but don't want to take the political heat of openly proposing that and learning what "regular people" really think. (Guess I should amend that to "cowardly and dishonest anti-government ideologues"...)
(Or, I suppose, d) all of the above, since they're not mutually exclusive.)
</brief gratuitous political rant>
Okay, maybe that wasn't so brief...