oohhbother asked:


Then no state could bar cheap and worthless policies.
What a plan!

“”The GOP plan was drafted by Rep. Tom Price, R-Ga., a physician. It avoids expanding the federal role in overseeing the health insurance industry. Unlike Democratic proposals, it would not set up new federally regulated purchasing pools for individuals and small businesses. Instead, it would allow individuals to use the Internet to purchase lower-cost coverage available anywhere in the country. That idea won’t please insurance commissioners from states with strong consumer protections, who have argued it will set off a “race to the bottom” that undermines coverage for those in frail health.”"
Republicans regulate the quality of coverage…?
Not likely. They pose for pictures with chain saws to cut regulations.

Delia

edphillipdoles asked:


Some individuals feel that putting people in control of their own health insurance is the best answer for fixing the problems, we can let these people chose any plan they want from any state then tailor the plan to fit there need. For instance you are young and there has no one in your family has had heart disease you can leave that off. You never get sick put on a high deductible to lower cost even more. These policies will no doubt have abritration clauses where if you do have a problem with them fullfilling there part, you will go in front of an arbitrator who will decide the case. You will be responsible for paying all your own legal costs out of pocket remember they have attorneys on the payroll.

Think the insurance companies are going to compete with each other, you will find all policies within 10% of each other. Why should they offer lower prices. Remember they must meet wall street expectations this means every year they have to increase profits.

Has anyone ever seen drug companies putting ads on t.v. saying there medications are better or cheaper than the competition?

While supply and demand works well in many industries, in health care it does not work.
Bill – ok go shop around for insurance and see how much it costs. quit trying to make health care a commodity based product. Getting health care is not the same as getting a haircut.
it seems the reality I live in is much different than some of you, Bush tried to put a cap on lawsuits, I’m sure most have forgotten insurance companies saying even if it passed they would not lower malpractice insurance premiuims.

To say a publicly held companies motivation is not profit is stupidity, companies make profits which they use to pay back investors in the way of dividends. Profit is the only motivating factor.

doctor and hosptital costs also need to be brought under control.

Hospitals should be non profit. Today many hospitals are owned by investment groups. End of the year the hospital shows a 10 million profit investors divide up the money. Nonprofit the money would be used to hire more people, and purchase new equipment.
jacob – it is so nice to believe Adam Smith’s theory is still alive in at least the mind of some people. although the facts show a much different picture concerning supply and demand in regards to the insurance industry. The Hmo was Nixon’s baby. he signed the bill knowing the end result would be higher cost for the public, and more profit for insurance companies.

Irene

Man Created God asked:


http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/health-care-action-center/?source=feature
Core of the reform plan > * Reduce costs — Rising health care costs are crushing the budgets of governments, businesses, individuals, and families, and they must be brought under control
* Guarantee choice — Every American must have the freedom to choose their plan and doctor – including the choice of a public insurance option
* Ensure quality care for all — All Americans must have quality and affordable health care
It,s the`08 election all over again, These commercials are BOLD FACED LIES! Who in their *RIGHT* mind would believe that the reform plan decides if the elderly are to be left to die, WE HAVE MEDI-CARE rite NOW that takes care of the elderly/disabled. The insurance Co.s dont want to be forced to except people with preexisting conditions or to keep people when they get sick and start costing them big $$. So they spend $Millions$ on these TV ads to tell lies about the reform plan, then coach right wing radicals to disrupt the town hall meetings that were all set up to expose the lies and enplane the truth. I myself have to LAUGH when these ads come on the TV, They are SO ridiculous,they actually accuse the plan of the terrible things the insurance co.s want to continue to get away with but wont be able to under the reform plan. Like I said, It’s the `08 election all over again. Ignore the likes of that Junkie hypocrite Rush Limpballs and read the plan for YOUR SELF!
http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/health-care-action-center/?source=feature

Jaiden

Dr. 38-81-32 asked:


My Blue Cross plan costs $165 a month for my family. 12 months times $165 is $1980.00. Obama said individual health care costs $12000.00 a year. What moron is going to believe that lie.

OBAMA: Said that if families get a $5,000 tax credit for buying health insurance and the insurance then costs $12,000, that’s a loss for them.

Roselyn

itsyourworld_changeit asked:


KANSAS CITY, Missouri (Reuters) – As health care generates debate in this year’s presidential campaign, about 68 percent of Americans say individuals should be required to have medical insurance, with government help for those who cannot afford it, a survey released on Tuesday found.
According to the survey by The Commonwealth Fund, an independent foundation working toward health policy reform, health insurance mandates were supported by 80 percent of Democrats, 52 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of Independents.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080115/pl_nm/usa_politics_healthcare_dc;_ylt=AhLD_8OJtpTrh8lHCljg1Nas0NUE

Our current system is BROKEN! HR 676 is the FIX! Will you support HR 676?
http://www.hr676.org/
http://www.house.gov/conyers/news_hr676.htm

Your Thoughts?
Myths on Universal Health Care
By Dr. Marcia Angell, Past Editor New England Journal of Medicine February 4, 2003. Washington D.C.
Myth #1: We can’t afford a national health care system, and if we try it, we will have to ration care. My answer is that we can’t afford not to have a national health care system. A single-payer system would be far more efficient, since it would eliminate excess administrative costs, profits, cost-shifting and unnecessary duplication. Furthermore, it would permit the establishment of an overall budget and the fair and rational distribution of resources. We should remember that we now pay for health care in multiple ways – through our paychecks, the prices of goods and services, taxes at all levels of government, and out-of-pocket. It makes more sense to pay just once.
Myth #2: Innovative technologies would be scarce under a single-payer system, we would have long waiting lists for operations and procedures, and in general, medical care would be threadbare and less available. This misconception is based on the fact that there are indeed waits for elective procedures in some countries with national health systems, such as the U. K. and Canada. But that’s because they spend far less on health care than we do. (The U. K. spends about a third of what we do per person.) If they were to put the same amount of money as we do into their systems, there would be no waits and all their citizens would have immediate access to all the care they need. For them, the problem is not the system; it’s the money. For us, it’s not the money; it’s the system.
Myth #3: A single-payer system amounts to socialized medicine, which would subject doctors and other providers to onerous, bureaucratic regulations. But in fact, although a national program would be publicly funded, providers would not work for the government. That’s currently the case with Medicare, which is publicly funded, but privately delivered. As for onerous regulations, nothing could be more onerous both to patients and providers than the multiple, intrusive regulations imposed on them by the private insurance industry. Indeed, many doctors who once opposed a single-payer system are now coming to see it as a far preferable option.
Myth #4: Claims the government can’t do anything right. Some Americans like to say that, without thinking of all the ways in which government functions very well indeed, and without considering the alternatives. I would not want to see, for example, the NIH, the National Park Service, or the IRS privatized. We should remember that the government is elected by the public and we are responsible for it. An investor-owned insurance company reports to its owners, not to the public.
Phil, the DMV here in NJ is VERY efficient. They’ve streamlined everything and at most, you’re in and out in half an hour. Our government does many things right, Social Security (if the government would stop borrowing from it), our military, police, schools, roads, etc. ALL are forms of “socialism” if you think about it.
Ronnie, if you claim UHC “doesn’t work,” it’s only fair that you back up your claim with reasons as to WHY it doesn’t and then provide sources. If making sure the least among us is taken care of then call me a socialist. I don’t speak for all Democrats though. But then I suppose you’d have to call Jesus a “socialist” too. Read Matthew 25:31-46
MNVikes, A Single Payer Universal Health Care system will make sense and save us money. The US spent $2 Trillion on health care in ‘06 and that’s without coverage for every American. If we spent HALF of that ($1 trillion) on UHC we’d still be saving ourselves $1 trillion annually AND covering EVERY American! Many companies actually WANT UHC, such as the automobile industry because they’re being crushed under the weight of rising health care costs. UHC would lift this burden off of employers while giving employees greater job mobility since they wouldn’t have to worry about “losing their benefits” if they left a job. Seems win-win to me!
Sweaty, what about Corporate Welfare?
Nowhere in the Constitution is
Congress granted the authority to spend funds to directly subsidize industry, or to enter into joint ventures with automobile companies, or to guarantee loans to favored business owners. Yet, since the New Deal, by applying very expansive
readings of the General Welfare Clause, the Supreme Court has allowed Congress to redistribute wealth from taxpayers to favored business
interests. Some spending that benefits
businesses, such as infrastructure spending and the funding of courts to enforce contracts, also benefits the population as a whole. But those are expenditures that benefit all companies and citizens generally and are usually not geared to a specific activity or industry. The programs of the corporate welfare state, on the other hand, do not fit this definition.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa592.pdf
Buffy,
Why should we protect incompetent doctors? If a doctor saws off the wrong leg, or removes the wrong organ they shouldn’t be sued? You can’t put a price on someones life or the impact a botched operation could have on their life. Our government is there to protect ALL Americans, but should take greater care to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Limiting the awards of malpractice suits only hurts the little guys.
Floating, we’ll never know unless we TRY. Under the current system, many medical decisions about what’s best for you are now being made by some corporate bureaucrat working for a private insurance company whose main concern is making larger profits by denying your claims. How exactly does that work out to be better for you?

Marley

bettyx1138 asked:


- Seems like all health ins for individuals have huge “deductibles” meaning i have to pay $2k-$4K of medical costs before the insurance kicks in. I want a $0 deductible like my current ins (which is thru old employer thru COBRA.)

- Seems like they all also have a huge “co-insurance”, 10%-20%, which (i believe but am not certain, which if true means that the nomenclature “co-insurance” is GROSSLY misleading) means that the ins covers only 80-90% of bills, and I have to pay the remaining 10-20%.

These plans are @ $500/month plus all those deductibles and “co-ins” will come out to $10K/year!!

My doctors don’t take most of the individual plans I’ve found except united healthcare and oxford.

I’d pay $1K for a simple plan that simply covered everything.

Help! Does anyone know of any such plans I can get in NYC?

TIA

Lia

Beelishy asked:


I am American (29 years old), living in the UK with my British husband (39 years old). We are looking into relocating (going back, for me) to the US. The only thing holding us back at this point is health insurance. I would be fine with employer provided group insurance. My husband is not only British, but he also has a pre-existing condition known as Polymyositis. He is in perfectly good health, otherwise and is on a single medication once a week to control his disease.
Being that he has this, the main condition of our being able to relocate is that he must have health insurance as soon as possible when we do move over, which would mean an individual policy, as far as I can tell, which we don’t mind at all paying for. So my question is basically, is this possible? Will anyone cover him? And if so, would there be a time period in which he would need to be resident in the US prior to coverage starting? Also, approximately what would be the cost of something like that? Thanks!

Jamya

mission_viejo_california asked:


RUSH: A little bit about something I brought up in Philadelphia last night: health care. I’ve talked about it in a similar vein on this program, but I had the occasion recently to meet with another liberal, a liberal chick. This liberal chick had this book on self-reliance, and she’s reading passages to me, and I was thinking to myself, “What is a liberal doing with a book on self-reliance?” So I’m thinking she can’t be as liberal as she thinks — and truly she is moving, even though she doesn’t know it. How could she not be, being with me a couple of hours? At any rate, as she read me some of these passages on self-reliance, I said, “Let me ask you a question. Where is self-reliance in the debate in this country over health care.”

“What do you mean?”

I said, “Well, why is it…?” and I asked the audience in Philadelphia this last night. I said, “Why is it that of all the needs in life, all of the needs — not wants, all of the needs — that we have in this country, how is it that we’re close to 50% of the American people who think it’s somebody else’s job to provide it for them? They’re self-reliant when it comes to buying their homes. They’re self-reliant when it comes to buying their cars, self-reliant when it comes to buying their lawn mowers, self-reliant when it comes to buying their televisions, self-reliant when it comes to buying hotel rooms, self-reliant when it comes to buying food, self-reliant when it comes to buying hardware supplies. Why is it that so many Americans now think that health care and insurance, is something they don’t have to be self-residential about? Does this trouble you?”

The answer I got was, “Well, you know, I really think we ought to provide health coverage for the poor because they’re overtaxing emergency rooms and that’s raising the price for everyone.”

I said, “Don’t give me that. Answer the question. Just answer the question. You’re going full bore here on self-reliance. This is good. Tell me why self-reliance gets thrown out the window when it comes to health care. I’ll tell you why. It’s politics! For years, and years, and years, Democrats and liberals have been telling people that health care is a constitutional right, that the government is supposed to provide it,” and I said, “The reason that they do this is because they want to control and they want to have as many people as possible dependent on them for the control they want over people,” and, of course, this is where the conversation started to break down, but at least I made the point, which leads me to the next story here in the Stack of Stuff. A Rasmussen poll. I have said we are approaching mob rule. Once we get to the point that, say, 55% of the American people think that health care should be “free,” paid for by somebody else, then we’re nearing mob rule. How are we going to stop that? Rasmussen poll: “Half of Americans support the notion of providing health care for free to all Americans, even though…” Listen to this, now: “even though they expect it will reduce the overall quality of care, increase the overall cost, and increase their personal costs.” What a bunch of lamebrains, if this is true — and the Rasmussen people are not cranks.

How do you go from providing health care “for free” to expecting your personal costs will go up? How can your personal costs go up if it’s free? Besides that, they say they’ll go for it even if it will reduce the overall quality of care and increase the cost. However, the support for free health care breaks down, falls dramatically “if the plan requires everybody with insurance to change their coverage and join a program administered by the government.” There is a silver lining in this dark cloud. “That’s consistent with a large body of research suggesting strong resistance to any proposal requiring people to switch from the current health insurance.” Folks, let me clue you in about something. You may not have a choice if Mrs. Clinton gets her way, and I point you back to this S-CHIP thing. This S-CHIP thing is no longer about kids. It’s about putting more and more people under a federal program. And Mrs. Clinton has said if her new health care plan is indoctrinated the way she wants or introduced, she’s going to let people keep their individual insurance, but she’s also going to have government programs, too, and she’s also said you might have to have health insurance when you go to a job interview. Well, if you can’t afford it, you go to the government and get it. That’s how you go get a job.

The point is that with the government competing with the private sector, the private sector is going to take it on the chin, and people are going to feel the need to leave because prices are going to continue to rise and so forth because the government’s going to affect supply and demand being involved in the mix — and, down the road, the objective is to force the private sector out on its own. Make them just give up, as in businesses saying like the automakers, “We can’t survive if $2,000 of every car is priced for health care, and we can’t continue to pay people that are no longer working for us.” And the government comes along, “Well, we’ll take over your health care for you.” The government says that, and the companies say, “Good!” These CEOs are not dumb when it comes to their bottom line. “Let the government take it over, and so this is how it’s going to happen.” It won’t happen immediately. It’s a stealth program. Look, the old Soviets, folks, they were very patient. They had goals to get something done five years, ten years, 100 years, whatever it took. You know, the old saying: Take two steps forward. If you have to go one step back, now and then, you do it, but you keep making progress. They don’t do things in four-year increments, eight-year increments. The liberals have been at this for a long time, and they’re going to keep at it, so this is one of the stealth techniques that they’re going to employ.

Morgan

Overt Operative asked:


The for-profit health insurance industry in the USA certainly seems dedicated to the bottom line and not individual’s best needs. Cost for health coverage will soon exceed the budgets of many in the middle-class, if it hasn’t already.
How do supporters of univeral health care propose to enact a national health care system and maintain the integrity private enterprise in the medical industry?
How do you propose a federal government, which doesn’t seem to be able to administer any program with much degree of competence, administer this system?
What are the estimates of increased tax burden on the taxpayers to fund the system?
How would you propose preventing the US treasury from using the system as another revenue base like SS?
What would prevent user abuse of the services?
What would stop coercion by the federal government, like demanding diet changes and other unhealthy practices?
If these questions cannot or won’t be answered, universal health care will never be accepted by Americans. It’s the details of any program that’s important, not the warm fuzzy feeling over the idea.

Alice

GrapeApe asked:


Propaganda! I have read the entire 1018 pages of the the proposed reform. Im also a third year Med student. I have read and heard all the lies and added language from lobbyist that have placed major spins on the topic. The current system is broken. It appears that the ones with money to lose are spreading all the lies. Leading cause of bankruptcy in America is from individuals with health insurance but are overwhelmed with medical bills. A great example is my wife’s policy is 900 a month. She has a 2500 a year deductible. Preventative care costs have to be paid as part of the deductible (500 for a mammogram and 375 for a prostate exam). I was hospitalized and transferred 3 times each time a new MRI had to be conducted billing my insurance over 16,000 for duplicate tests due to each hospitals policy. It is stealing. Go to a dentist and pay cash you will find the cost will be a third of what it would of been if you had dental insurance. The time is now. I have interviewed veterans in our local VA hospital. None of them have been asked to sign away their right to life. I suspect the same individuals that are profiting from outsourcing customer service, textiles and manufacturing base (tangibles that have rebounded us from previous recessions) are behind this.

Fiona