My birthday's coming up this month. On April 30th my health insurance company sent me a lovely letter to let me know that to celebrate my big day they'd decided to up my premium by $35 from $191 to $226 starting July 1st.

Then, a month later, they sent me another letter explaining that they were raising my premium again, this time by a hefty $65, just because they can, you know, for the hell of it. What a gift!

That's a total premium increase of $100 effective July 1st.

Think about that. My premium was $191. It's going up to $291. That's an increase of over 50% in one year.

Can you think of any other product or service that's gone up by more than 50% this year? In this economy? Have health care costs increased by that much in the past twelve months? Really?

(Someone's sure having a party at my expense!)

What do I want for my birthday? Universal health care please Mr. Obama.

Otherwise I can't afford to get any older.