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Dear possum:
"To get our insurance to cover the procedures, we had to have a plastic surgeon handle it at a hospital as outpatient surgery."

Don't you see it--you are part of the problem. You admit that the moles were a minor problem, easily handled in your doctor's office when you were either: (a) in a family without insurance or (b)in a family which took things like minor medical problems in stride as part of living and paid for the procedure themselves.

But now, when you are presumably wiser and richer as well as older, you want "someone else" to pay to remove your mole. The excuse is 'everybody does it' or 'I'm paying a lot for that medical insurance every year, so I'm entitled to finagle the coverage to get my money back."

So, rather than go to your doctor and have the mole removed at your own expense at a far lower cost, you go to all that trouble at the local outpatient clinic--and rack up those higher costs to the insurance company--which inevitably will factor your action (and all those who try to "beat the system" like you)into higher medical insurance costs--which you will no doubt complain and holler about.

Talk about spiraling health care.

Yes, you're right about the doctors and hospitals using costly "defensive" medical practices. For example, the reason why you had to be wheeled around the hospital was that patients' attorneys have sued because their clients weren't properly protected from fainting or whatever while walking down the halls. So they have to pay people to wheel you down the halls during your stay (and often right to the exits when you are discharged) as a protective measure to keep from getting sued.

Here on FreeRepublic we always talk about individual responsibility and our disgust for the "nanny state" mentality which postulates that government or insurance companies or someone is responsible for taking care of us, but far too many of us fall into the same trap without realizing it.

I stress the "not realizing it" part because I don't intend to criticize your action in particular as heinous. It's just that we all--even conservatives--have been conditioned over time to think someone else should pay for all our ills.

Don't you see it--you are part of the problem. You admit that the moles were a minor problem, easily handled in your doctor's office when you were either: (a) in a family without insurance or (b)in a family which took things like minor medical problems in stride as part of living and paid for the procedure themselves.

Actually, I agree with you. This was a situation which we found ourselves in at the time and I wound up being astonished as we saw the situation growing into more extravagant ridiculousness.

And, it bears pointing out, I have in recent years found it increasingly difficult to find 'fee-for-service' medical care. Usually, a new office's first question is not for my name or what the problem is, it's "Can I have your insurance card, please?"