Wait CSA…we have Medicare with all those advantages. And, you may be different, but most on the plan are happy with it.
I see only two things.
First, your very expensive plan does little in comparison
And second you say there are no solutions.
What you fail to see is your premiums are high because your company has very high profit margins and you are ALREADY paying for the uninsured in the most expensive, and least accountable ways, hospital ERs…they over charge for everything that only regulation can cure
Many other countries do it successfully ! Their people live longer and they pay less for their coverage. Of course they have stricter gun laws…,maybe that’s an alternative to Obamacare. ;=)
“The Obama government doesn’t have the solution either” is that a polite way of saying…“let them die” ?
Mike, I agree. Retailers will not change their practices. The reason those people you refer to don;t have health insurance is simple; the can't afford to buy it. The only change now is that they'll be forced to buy it or the IRS will take it out of their paychecks.....making life even more difficult for them.
And the few people I know who are in that situation are extremely HAPPY for it. Because they’ll be buying into a group plan as opposed to an individual plan…meaning it’ll cost them far far less then if they had to buy insurance on their own.
The point though is NOT the individuals…but how it’ll effect companies…and MOST companies won’t be effected at all.
@mikeinnh
Good call ! @barkydog
Exactly. That $3k goes to help fund his employees individual plans. Many companies will choose this route to save money overall. Nothing wrong with that.
Wow and wow!,well its a fact of life that companies must make money and generate a profit to stay in business,but it seems now the question is ,how much money can these groups squirrel away or splurge? I see all these multi-million dollar outpatient and health care centers springing up(which by thier nature are good trickle down for the economy) and realize someone must pay for this-my advice young people get a job in the healthcare industry,always going to be a demand.You cant get get much better conditions to work then this[climate controlled,benefits, a chance to advance ,etc] Non profit?not on your life(kinda like paid “volunteers”)
What incensed me one time was,I went to a pain and injury practice,for intractable pain and on the first visit I got the imaging run around and a prescription for “super aspirin” so they did nothing to help me and I even had to submit to a 12 tier urinanlysis when I went home,the more I thought about it,the madder I got(this place was 80 miles from where I live) We got on the phone and I found out that these folks were trying to charge $7000 for this first visit,I had a row with em" and never came back.Finally I found an Honest local pain Doctor who understood what was going on and he actually helped me with facet injections under X-Ray(he didnt charge a fortune either) unfortunately he moved his practice out of the area and good luck to him,Good help is hard to find.
Till people understand medicine,I say its going to get worse despite what Dr .Oz sez" its pretty hard to understand the Latinese mumbo-jumbo( techno-jargon scares a lot of people to death) and the like,I guess each group has to feel special-Kevin
More than 25% of Americans have no insurance other than Medicaid or Medicare and a great many have no insurance whatsoever. The Republican position is to privatize Medicare and Medicaid to give insurance companies a new gold mine.
Federal money would be spent by Republicans to pump up insurance company profits while allowing the insurance companies to become the “death panels.” But, of course, corporate policy that results in people dying due to monetary limits and capital retention is acceptable as opposed to Democratic policy. Just ask Jim Cramer.
Mike, shouldn’t it be up to those people themselves to decide whether they can afford that group plan? At exactly what point should we give up our freedom to make up our own minds? $88 a month? $100 a month? $200 a month?
I’m in support of the feds providing a group plan system for people to access for healthcare. But not taking away their freedom to decide not to.
And the cost to businesses, who do you think will pay that? The consumer. Whether that’s an individual customer, another business, or the government itself, the consumer will face a price increase. We’ll all see the cost of everything rise. Those on the botton of the socioeconomic ladder will feel it as more economic pain. Those on higher levels will simply not buy as many discretionary items.
Rod, it would strike me that the absolute best way to pump up insurance company profits would be to pass a law forcing everyone to buy insurance. Oops! And if it works, perhaps we should pass another law forcing everyonoe to buy a new GM product. Freedom of choice? The heck with freedom of choice. Who wants to live in a free country anyway. And “death panels” are pure unadultrated BS; pure scare tactic rhetoric. Obamacare’s new regulatory agency will certainly have a panel that decides when it’s no longer economically realistic to continue funding procedures for the terminally ill, but…oh, you meant the republicans!
The Obama administration’s effort toward “single payer” brought on the healthcare industry’s emotional ads to counter it and the “death panel” attack was one of the most significant. Certainly those non-profit hospitals want to protect their retained earnings. Who can blame them.
But the poor are here and either we pay for their healthcare on top of the table or we continue to play the shell game that wastes billions under the table for fraud and abuse by the Florida governor, et al.
Rod, don’t let your hate for repulicans take you down the path of dragging individuals into the Obamacare discussion. There’s plenty of fraud and abuse to go around on both sides.
So, we continue to pay billions under the table with the old system that at least leaves us free to make a choice or pay trillions for the new system that removes the freedom of choice. I’ll take the former.
And exactly how many freedoms to we surrender to the government regulatory agencies before we say “enough”?
And do you really believe that Obamacare will eliminate waste and fraud? The whole process under which the bill was passed may go down in history as the most corrupt process in the history of federal legislation! Do you really think the corruption will stop now that he bill has passed?
I will add, that there is no proof that Obamacare care will improve the “broken” health care system. From what I’m reading it could very possibly make things worse in ways we can not yet imagine. I’m not even convinced that more people will have health care coverage after this thing is in place and I’m not sure this country can afford it, especially at this time.
As I stated earlier, one SCOTUS decision (the tax that Obama said wasn’t tax) more or less gave Obamacare the green light. The decision that states could not have their Medicaid funds entirely withheld if they did not expand their Medicaid programs could be one of the many straws that break the camel’s back. Many people are not coming to the realization that the SCOTUS decisions were not all good as far as making ObamaCare viable. More concern should been and still should be given to the ramifications.
Throwing out a faulty sysem and replacing it with one with greater faults, at the cost of freedom, doesn’t seem to be the best we can do.
Well said, CSA.
And John Roberts had to struggle to find reason to not vote that the ACA was unconstitutional. Scalia called Roberts’ final decision something to the effect of verbal dancing. I can’t remember the exact words.
Anything would have been better than the ACA. Taking away our freedoms, overtaxing our budget and out working class, and burdening our small businesses is not the answer.
Should we solve the homeless problem by mandating that everyone buy a nouse?
Mike, shouldn't it be up to those people themselves to decide whether they can afford that group plan? At exactly what point should we give up our freedom to make up our own minds? $88 a month? $100 a month? $200 a month?
I’m very tossed between this.
On one hand I agree that people should make their own decision.
On the other hand I look at it like SSN and medicare. People who DON’T save for retirement or don’t have family support or insurance to take care of medical problems…then the rest of us are paying for it. All across this country you can find people in emergency rooms that don’t have insurance and don’t have the means to pay. Some of these procedures are very very expensive. And that means the cost is passed onto the tax payers. Here in NH it’s not too bad. But for my relatives in upstate NY where they are still at double digit unemployment…it adds up to MILLIONS every year.
My feeling is that a broadbased single-payer system might have been developed that could have provided healthcare to the uninsured. We pledge endless billions to third world countries, some of whom don’t even support us, for all forms fo craziness including support of their “green initiatives”. Perhaps we should spend that money on our own citizens. And how many countless billions do we spend on subsidies to the oil companies, and to ethanol producers, and to agricultural conglomerates to NOT grow specific crops?
And we won’t even discuss the wasteful spending of the TSA.
And I’m only scratching the surface.
The problem isn’t that we don;t have enough revenue to create a healthcare system for the poor. The problem is that we’re blowing all on other countries and on rich industries…with lobbies!
My feeling is that a broadbased single-payer system might have been developed that could have provided healthcare to the uninsured. We pledge endless billions to third world countries, some of whom don't even support us, for all forms fo craziness including support of their "green initiatives". Perhaps we should spend that money on our own citizens. And how many countless billions do we spend on subsidies to the oil companies, and to ethanol producers, and to agricultural conglomerates to NOT grow specific crops?
No argument from me on any of that…We GIVE away way too much to other countries…and get almost nothing in return.
The problem is that we're blowing all on other countries and on rich industries......with lobbies!
Again I agree.
As for creating a healthcare system for the poor…We’re already doing that…It’s called the Emergency Room. I personally think that if everyone had access to decent health care…then costs for the rest of us would DROP…NOT RISE. The poor who are going to the emergency room are gong there with acute illnesses. Emergency rooms don’t cover health maintenance and preventative procedures.
Example - Everyone over 50 should get a colonoscopy every 5 years. The procedure is a lot cheaper then treating Colon Cancer.
"Example - Everyone over 50 should get a colonoscopy every 5 years. The procedure is a lot cheaper then treating Colon Cancer. "
Hold on, there’s now a lot of concern about over-monitoring. For example, there’s pretty good evidence that prostate biopsies result in more problems (infection, damage to nearby tissue) than they prevent. The same can be said for too-frequent colonoscopies of folks with no risk indicators. Of course it’s cheaper for one patient, but that’s not the point. We need to be very smart about how we target tests and monitoring.
Just To Complicate Things A Bit, Although I Don’t Know How They Compare In Accuracy To Colonsocopies, There Are Other Much Cheaper, Less Invasive (That *&^$# Liquid I Drank Was The Most Invasive Part !) Colon Cancer Screenings Besides Colonoscopies And They Require No Drinking.
CSA