Ding dong the witch is dead, the wicked witch is dead!!!

Now how about Obama sorts out the real problem?

Per capita, the US government is the 3rd highest spender on health care in the world. But all that money is swallowed up by private companies and the people get screwed.
 
the_leander said:
Enjoy your third world infant mortality rates.
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Without getting too much in it, all I have to say is what was the proposal on the table would have helped no one.
 
redrumloa said:
the_leander said:
Enjoy your third world infant mortality rates.
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Without getting too much in it, all I have to say is what was the proposal on the table would have helped no one.
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Now, as I understood it, whilst the initial idea wouldn't have created a US NHS as such, it would have allowed much more affordable access to healthcare.

I'll put my hands up and say I've not really been following this story since it passed its first major hurdle. Are you saying that what got through was so watered down/torn apart that it would have done sweet fa essentially?
 
the_leander said:
I'll put my hands up and say I've not really been following this story since it passed its first major hurdle. Are you saying that what got through was so watered down/torn apart that it would have done sweet fa essentially?
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What they were putting forward was such nonsense, even faethor rejected it iirc. First off the bill is 1,990 pages and about 400,000 words, written in legalese. A print-out of the bill weighs more than 19 pounds and stands nearly nine inches tall. Private health care plans would be taxed, meaning people who are currently insured will pay more. Federal law will require everyone have insurance, yet 10's of millions would still be uninsured. Anyone who fails to buy insurance would be fined through their income tax. If they fail to pay this fine, they would be charged with a federal offense and thrown in prison. Sounds like a plan to make homeless people, off-grid kooks and anyone who doesn't conform just mysteriously disappear... State rights disappear, the Federal government is given unprecedented authority to control every aspect of our lives. Pork, pork, pork! Billions of dollars thrown all over the place for pork projects and to health care providers & drug companies. In short, quality of service plummets, costs skyrocket, freedoms are shredded, 10s of millions remain uninsured and undesirables are eliminated. It helps no one except big government, drug & health care providers.

Here is an example. I have a standard 80/20 PPO family plan with minimal HSA. This is towards the lower end of plans, nothing fancy. I still pay thousands out of pocket every year on top of my insurance premiums. Not only will my premiums go up because of taxing of private plans, they will also hit me with a $2,000 "Cadillac tax" claiming I have a luxury healthy plan. Not very funny, considering we are lower middle class and starting to struggle.
 
redrumloa said:
What they were putting forward was such nonsense, even faethor rejected it iirc.
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No doubt. IMO the answer to the problem is not mandating more customers for private healthcare insurance companies. Charging to move paper and money about adds negative value to healthcare. I think we have two options. Either extend Medicare to all conditions and all people or move everyone to single payer. The former would take a couple of pages at most, it makes no sense to pay for Medicare, Medicaid, and healthcare. They should be combined.

State rights disappear the Federal government is given unprecedented authority to control every aspect of our lives.
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States rights? I'll admit my bias I consider any pro-Bushy invoking states rights to be a hypocrite. We saw how the activist Supreme Court likes to stop on states rights.

As for Federal government does have the right to control interstate commerce and provide for the general welfare. Unprecedented authority of control? The Federal regulations mandated expanded rules, such as inability to deny insurance for pre-existing conditions, on the private industries. The private industries still got the people. There really wasn't much Federal controls here, actually part of the problem too fascist. It helps the private industries more than people.

Not only will my premiums go up because of taxing of private plans, they will also hit me with a $2,000 "Cadillac tax" claiming I have a luxury healthy plan. Not very funny, considering we are lower middle class and starting to struggle.
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Where / how did you figure this out? Sounds to me like a Rush snippet, if memory serves...
 
faethor said:
Not only will my premiums go up because of taxing of private plans, they will also hit me with a $2,000 "Cadillac tax" claiming I have a luxury healthy plan. Not very funny, considering we are lower middle class and starting to struggle.
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Where / how did you figure this out? Sounds to me like a Rush snippet, if memory serves...
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I very rarely listen to Rush any more, I've lost all respect for the man and he doesn't speak much sense.

http://www.miamiherald.com/living/healt ... 33071.html

The bill creates a 40 percent tax on healthcare benefits valued at more than $8,000 annually for an individual, $21,000 for a family. That measure includes employer and employee contributions, plus the amounts in health and flexible savings accounts.

Santiago Leon, a Miami insurance broker, says that in South Florida ``we have on the market today a surprising number of plans that would hit the `Cadillac' ceiling.''
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Considering I am married, have a wife & 4 kids, have a minimal HSA and live in South Florida, I will certainly hit the Cadillac ceiling.

Meanwhile, Milliman, a national consulting firm, released a study earlier this year that an average employer-based, preferred provider organization plan for a family of four in the Miami area cost $20,282 in 2008.
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I have a family of 6, not 4. If anything I was generous with my assumption of $2,000 Cadillac tax, it would probably be much higher.
 
redrumloa said:
faethor said:
Not only will my premiums go up because of taxing of private plans, they will also hit me with a $2,000 "Cadillac tax" claiming I have a luxury healthy plan. Not very funny, considering we are lower middle class and starting to struggle.
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Where / how did you figure this out? Sounds to me like a Rush snippet, if memory serves...
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I very rarely listen to Rush any more, I've lost all respect for the man and he doesn't speak much sense.

http://www.miamiherald.com/living/healt ... 33071.html
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Cool thanks. One of the problems is the Senate and House bills are so different. The additional tax was in one bill and not the other. That helps better bring understanding to these 2 bills.

Considering I am married, have a wife & 4 kids, have a minimal HSA and live in South Florida, I will certainly hit the Cadillac ceiling.
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Don't do the crime if you can't pay the fine. -- Kidding.. Usually Taxes have a sliding scale based on income and on headcount. IMO, one would have to check deeper than the news article.

Meanwhile, Milliman, a national consulting firm, released a study earlier this year that an average employer-based, preferred provider organization plan for a family of four in the Miami area cost $20,282 in 2008.
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Isn't Florida one of the more expensive Healthcare states in the nation? The old folks use their freedom to move to a state with low-taxes but end up paying the monies in a different way. Floridians should just use their freedom to move to a state that has more favorible terms for Healthcare Taxes. (Sorry, I was channeling Minnesota Republicans who tell me their taxes are too high and they're moving to no tax states of Florida and Arizona and never do.)
 
faethor said:
IMO, one would have to check deeper than the news article.
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Read the 2,000 page bill and get back to me :wink: I haven't heard or seen anything that would indicate otherwise. This alone is a show stopper for me, the stupidity is amazing and probably points to an obsessive desire for totalitarian control and callus disregard for human life. This would force people from mediocre health care plans into terribly substandard ones, killing off any idea of an HSA. Criminally unethical or evil, choose you choice of terms.

Isn't Florida one of the more expensive Healthcare states in the nation? The old folks use their freedom to move to a state with low-taxes but end up paying the monies in a different way. Floridians should just use their freedom to move to a state that has more favorible terms for Healthcare Taxes. (Sorry, I was channeling Minnesota Republicans who tell me their taxes are too high and they're moving to no tax states of Florida and Arizona and never do.)
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Never paid too much attention to Florida health care costs compared to other states, but it being one of the more expensive ones would probably be a no-brainer. Florida has to be near the top of the list when it comes to corruption and incompetence, behind California of course. We tried to escape Florida once and almost succeeded, now we are waiting until the kids all graduate high school until we make our final escape. We have a long 8 years to go...
 
redrumloa said:
Read the 2,000 page bill and get back to me :wink: I haven't heard or seen anything that would indicate otherwise. This alone is a show stopper for me, the stupidity is amazing and probably points to an obsessive desire for totalitarian control and callus disregard for human life. This would force people from mediocre health care plans into terribly substandard ones, killing off any idea of an HSA. Criminally unethical or evil, choose you choice of terms.
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But would it? You stated your plan was a bit over $20K a year. Many people have been seeing double digit increases to medical coverage year over year. This would actually be in alignment with that, and a 'one time' big bump. (Of course taxes may change as years go on but we're talking a couple hundred on $20K, probably 1-2%) One company in California is charging a 39% increase. Imagine if you lived there you'd now pay $28K... $22K almost sounds like a deal.

Some of the plusses of these bills.. One pegs the rate of increases of the plans to the rate of inflation. Another removes anti-trust protections that exist for insurers. Today insurance companies can legally get together to deny coverage and set rates. How anti-capitalistic is that! And importantly they could no longer deny anyone for a pre-existing condition.

I'm sorry to hear about your illnesses and pending treatments. And I feel for you even more. If you leave your present employer you're rolling the dice as your whole family could be denied insurance in the future. That would be truly sad. This issue is a worry no one should have to face.

Never paid too much attention to Florida health care costs compared to other states, but it being one of the more expensive ones would probably be a no-brainer. Florida has to be near the top of the list when it comes to corruption and incompetence, behind California of course. We tried to escape Florida once and almost succeeded, now we are waiting until the kids all graduate high school until we make our final escape. We have a long 8 years to go...
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My Dad is almost 70. He's trying to buy a condo in Florida. We may be almost neighbors.

Here's a list of healthcare ranked by State Lay the blue/red political map over the top. Seems to be blue are the best and red is the worst. I find those coorelations interesting. We see similar things with divorce rates and teen pregnancy rates for example. The more liberal states tend to rank better. I wonder why that is.
 
Robert said:
Believe it or not, there are actually people on this very site who have, aherm, "argued" that because the Nazi's had 'socialist' in their party name, they were left leaning.

In short, you're pishing in the wind.
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Yeah likely. There were those here who also asserted the Tea Party are liberals. :python:
 
redrumloa said:
Federal law will require everyone have insurance, yet 10's of millions would still be uninsured. Anyone who fails to buy insurance would be fined through their income tax.
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We have the same requirement in Germany. I have read complaints from US citizens about the concept a number of times now and it is apparently considered major limitation of "personal freedom"...

However, there are actually very good reasons to implement something like this. Here is a good article about it (feel free to ignore who the author is to keep an open mind):

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/opini ... ugman.html

Here’s the story: About 800,000 people in California who buy insurance on the individual market — as opposed to getting it through their employers — are covered by Anthem Blue Cross, a WellPoint subsidiary. These are the people who were recently told to expect dramatic rate increases, in some cases as high as 39 percent.

Why the huge increase? It’s not profiteering, says WellPoint, which claims instead (without using the term) that it’s facing a classic insurance death spiral.

Bear in mind that private health insurance only works if insurers can sell policies to both sick and healthy customers. If too many healthy people decide that they’d rather take their chances and remain uninsured, the risk pool deteriorates, forcing insurers to raise premiums. This, in turn, leads more healthy people to drop coverage, worsening the risk pool even further, and so on.
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JoBBo said:
We have the same requirement in Germany. I have read complaints from US citizens about the concept a number of times now and it is apparently considered major limitation of "personal freedom"...
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The limitation of personal freedoms already occur in the healthcare industry:

Companies decide what procedures to cover, California companies deny 25% of claims after they verbally approved them.

Companies deny people with pre-existing conditions. Get sick, especially a major illness, and change employers your new employer's insurance may simply refuse to cover you.

As an industry the law protects them against collusion. As a result they can get together and determine rates. As a result they can get together and decide to never insure John Doe ever again.

In many businesses the Health Insurance company worked to disallow employees to reject the Healthcare Insurance and take $ instead. This helps to prevent employees from competitively biding other options.

If the Dr. is thought to be in the wrong you can sue. If the Healthcare company is thought to be in the wrong you can't sue. If there's a disagreement you can use the arbiter, a Healthcare Company employee, or try and get your State's Attorney General to take action. Often times you don't get to pick your Dr.

Each Dr. needs to be approved by the healthcare insurance company. Not all Dr.s are approved for all companies. Using someone out of network often results in 75% to 100% of payment being out of pocket.

Insurance is often capped in it's payments for treatments. An ever increasing number of personal bankrupcies are due to healthcare companies refusing to pay for treatment.

And net the American system is twice as expensive as European systems. The USA is rarely #1 in quality of care so the money doesn't buy us anything. This forces people to spend more on medicine and less on other items.

Keeping the present system, IMO, has a significant amount of limited personal freedoms.
 
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