Yes, their premiums are reasonable- but they are, quite literally, major medical only with huge deductibles. My son's birth was on NASE- $6000 out of pocket for the co-pay on an $8000 bill.
Needless to say, I was very happy when I got the state job for a while and got off of NASE and on to Providence.
But now I'm looking for self-employed again, and this time around, I can't afford the huge deductibles. Oregon Medical Insurance Pool, though, looks like an option- and now that we've been denied a few times, we may be eligible for it.
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
Its almost financially prohibitive to start up a company in that state. I was watching Meg Whitman from eBay being interviewed and she echoed what a friend of mine said to me years ago when he was looking to expand. She was going on about how eBay needed to open up a new facility and that it took 2 years just to open up a new office with a server farm and reams of forms that for the most part duplicated each other's purpose. Now Frank, my friend, had a small metal shop that made parts for body shops somewhere near LA. Frank's a good guy, not some plutocrat and he never hired an illegal. Well too wanted to open up a new shop back in '92. He had purchased a second home to be near his mom in the center of the state and saw a good business opportunity. I'll tell you, body shops can be a good enterprise! Well here he is trying to open up that second shop and he too has to go through the beuracracy. Years later, he has to close up that second shop, why? Costs and taxes he says. And last year he closed up his first shop and decided to go to Texas to open up and then eventually retire.
confused yet? is his post where he is pointing out we have a massive MSM manipulation going on by leaking out here and there "reports" of who needs more money, then denials of who needs money, all staged to make sure the Zombie banks get more money in the end.
I feel like I'm watching a circle jerk. No this comment is not very analytical, but there is so much corruption to me and I just don't know what to call it when one private enterprise is involved in government regulations to help them get even more money, including taxpayer money and trying to hide whatever the truth of their books is....
frankly. They won't do anything realistic on illegal immigrants or anything at any time that might upset the political oligarchy, big business runs certain areas of the state, even when they are constantly on the brink of collapse. Absolutely nothing on employment law, workplace abuses. You cannot sue for anything because of the legal system. Unless you have a multi-million dollar case, there is pretty much no way to get justice and that includes small business....
It's a shame too because they have great resources.
I lived there too and with all of the great liberal rhetoric of diversity, equality and so forth, I have never seen an area so socially stratified than there. Seriously, not a black person in Silicon valley as far as the eye can see, women clearly being subjugated to work positions less than their abilities dictate, older workers being treated like garbage...even when it's very clear they are the ones actually get the products out the door and solving problems...(due to their experience), again in tech..but the biggest thing was listening to some liberal rhetoric all the while that very person just stepped over the homeless while entering their apartment. And if someone goes down financially, you can bet no one will lift a finger to help that person....just more nice sounding rhetoric. Truly the land of the haves and the have nots.
are a project where the government and insurance companies have combined. The government has strict guidelines that the insurance company must follow the government pays the insurance companys.
Now what I find weird is that I know a lot of old people. I play piano at a senior center. The figures I hear you all coming up with are nothing , not even near what the seniors pay. Even for a non Med Advantage plan the rates I am hearing seem odd. From what the seniors tell me the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare set the rates for Medicare Advantage, the rates are not based on age/sex. There are seniors there that have plans that they pay $0 for and a lot are paying about $50. Apparently there are some plans that are about $100 a month and allow more freedom to go where you want.
I have a friend who has a 40 year old daughter that is disabled. The daughter is on Medicare. I didn't know a 40 year old could get on Medicare but he says yes if the government declares you totally disabled. Her meds are outrageously expensive. She has a Med Supp with BSBC and it only costs @$150 a month. She has a co-pay for drugs but the insuance pays for most of them. He did say something about a donut hole that the government mandated. Donut hole???
I hear the seniors at the center talk about their health stuff. It is a big deal to them. The majority like their Medicare Advantage plans. Maybe you should check out a different company. I have never ever heard any seniors talk of a $300 a month Medicare Advantage plan. If they were charging you that much I would check into fraud.
I was there to play piano the day an insurance company came to do a dog and pony show. The max premium was $100 a month and the guy said that Medicare will only allow a certain premium.
CA in 1985. Sold my home and moved east. Every freak'in thing in that State is $$$$$$. My brother in law is selling his house for $4 million. In my State he could get 39 acres of land, a much bigger house and pay $750,000.
The devil is in the details but also check your sources. The lobbyists have been out in full force trying to ridicule other health care systems. The World Health Organization has a report on differing systems and also I found some very good data at the OECD.
My guess is the Obama team will simply rev up the printing presses and put more money in circulation to prop up the continued charade. What happens if they can't create money fast enough to buy the junk Tbills they are attempting to sell? No one else seems interested any longer. I just hope I won't have to pay my mortgage and fill up my car with Euros.
Your doctor hit a lot of the problems. Imagine if people just paid the poor guy when they went to see him.
When a Dr. sees a Medicare patient:
1. Physicians must make 11 decisions to select the proper Evaluation and Management (E&M) code, according to Medicare program guidelines.
2. Each decision point requires several choices.
3. There are a total of 42 choices a physician must consider in choosing the proper E&M code.
4. There are 6,144 possible combination's of items involved in properly classifying a new patient office visit
Medicare does deny claims but the people at Medicare that deny claims enjoy nearly iron-clad protection from being held accountable for their actions under "Official Immunity" and the "Medicare Preclusion Law." Under "Official Immunity,"
They cannot be held accountable as long as they were acting within the broad scope of their authority under the Medicare program-in which Medicare people write all of the rules and regulations. Under the "Medicare Preclusion Law," 42 U.S.C. Sec 405 (h), no lawsuit can be brought against a Medicare contractor or employee"
I have more on Medicare that will be provided after all the universal plans are presented.
Medical equipment is just insanely expensive. I imagine the manufacturers may do some gouging but they also may (no evidence here) probably use the best, best materials. If there is ever a failure the tort system would eat them alive. So they probably over engineer a lot of the stuff.
Anyone that is in business knows that it is the cost to defend that is the nasty item. Those small nuisance claims still need to be defended. Tort reform would help. A Physician Liability 2006 Benchmark Analysis, examining more than 47,700 claims representing more than $4.4 billion of incurred losses, found that while claim frequency is stabilizing, the average size of claims continues to increase at a rate of 6 percent a year. The average amount paid to plaintiffs increased only 3 percent, while amounts paid to defend against liability claims rose 17 percent as hospitals mount a more aggressive defense of claims.
My friend that owns a cabinet shop has seen his general liability policy go from $600 15 years ago to over $4,000. People will sue him even if they use his cabinets as a ladder and the cabinet tilts back and they fall. yep...it was one of his own real episodes.
The 250,000 figure comes from a colleague who studies the auto industry.
Auto plant shutdowns idle a lot of other workers.
Production is rarely integrated these days, meaning that assembly plants generally get their engines, trannies, and other parts from non-GM supplier plants.
It's called the multiplier effect, and it's huge in the auto industry. This is why states try to snag auto plants. A single job at an auto assembly line supports 20-30 jobs elsewhere making components.
immigrants credit cards so they could couch as legal citizens. B of A didn't care about laws, they just wanted to capture new humans. Don't the zombies always eat people?
Where did you get that 250,000 people are going to loose their job in Ohio? I have here in NewYork times that from the total of 244,000 jobs around the world GM will cut 47,000 jobs by the end of 2009 and 20,000 jobs cut will occur in US.
if they truly strip the shareholders, executives, bondholders of BoA and nationalize it. To me that would be a damn good thing. From firing people right and left, offshore outsourcing their jobs to giving mortgages to illegals and to their constant lobbying for more predatory consumer everything and labor arbitrage I think watching the death of BoA in it's current form would be a social godsend.
(Never mind the feeding of a Zombie of our money problem).
I bet Citigroup comes up real bad also and there is another group who got pretty much no consequence for their IPOs, inside pre-ipo stock in the 90's and they were heavily involved in pushing for the China PNTR which has cost so many U.S. jobs....so watching them go down to me, on a social basis wouldn't be too bad either.
That's leaves 2 titans running the country, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase.
I have to say thank you for posting this. Ironically enough I was at the doctors today (been having complications of sorts) and well since he had no other patients that day (odd since his office is normally busy) we chatted. The topic? Health coverage. I think he nailed it when he say the blame comes from four sides, the Government, the Insurance companies, tort and the medical equipment providers.
With the Government, he was showing me the actual forms and books they need to use. See, when you're on Medicare or Medicaid, what I learned today was that sometimes that checkup would have to be regarded as 4-5 different things. This book, actually it was three of them, had to be the size of phone books! You catagorized it wrong, and Uncle Sam won't pay you. On top of that, the rate is discounted below market prices. Now my doctor ain't cheap but he doesn't over do it either. When I had nothing, office visits were about $60, and after some in-office tests (his group invested in their own lab), my bills were around $300 tops. I've had other doctors, and have seen bills has high as $5k-9k for tests and stuff done at the hospital. But getting back to the government, he showed me the hoops he has to run through to just get paid. Indeed, this also tags with the insurance problem.
The insurance companies make him almost do the same dance. He has three ladies who just deal with the insurance and government paperwork. THe insurance companies try to screw him over more than the government, he says. He told me about things like how companies, like my Humana, will create a new plan that sounds just like the other Medicare plans but covers less. Then he told me about "Chameleons," a nickname many in his industry have dubbed to what he thinks is the biggest case of fraud yet still legalilzed. So what is he referring too? What if I told you that the insurance you think you own isn't who they really are. Case in point, he told me about how a Blue Cross Blue Shield outfit essentially rents out their name to smaller less scrupulous insurance companies. The person buying those policies are made to believe its BCBS, but in reality isn't. When that person sees the doctor and is given a bill higher than what they were told, they find out that the version of BCBS doesn't even come close to covering what the actual Blue Cross plans do. Its legal because of certain loopholes.
The insurance companies, along with the government plans (including Medicaid) have been cutting back. He showed me one sheet from 2007, one from 2008 dubbed that was part of a large folder of documents, it had a fancy title but it was basically changes to coverage and payments. He showed me how we're cutting back drastically. I asked about the private insurers, he grimmaced saying at least the government was more explicite. Some, as he explained, were going into what he termed "membership fees" for consultation. The way things are going, both the government and the insurers are pointing coverage in a direction where all one will get is as basic a care as possible. He told me, from the outlines he's seen, you really all will need is a high end nurse to do the "new physical." If you want "luxury care" you may have to pay the doctors a yearly fee for unlimited consultation. Frankly, I found this disturbing.
He then told me about how, despite not having one person in his outfit being sued, his malpractic has skyrocketed. A lot of doctors are moving out of general practice. We both could see how if a doctor screwed up he should pay. But the costs have simply gotten out of hand.
Last, but not least, there is the medical equipment providers. Now here he didn't show me as much as my friend Debrah. Debrah runs a laminating manufacturing firm in Skokie, Illinois. One of her clients, and long-time friend is this gal who I think is named Carole. Well "Carole" works for a company that sells things like stents and other such things. Debrah was thinking of setting up a company to sell these products (there isn't much demand for lamintors these days).
She learned how a lot of the stuff they buy costs literally pennies but they turn around and sell them at much higher prices. There was this little plastic thing, no bigger than the head of a pin, but tube shaped that went for I think was hip joints or something. Anyways, she said the thing costs the company literally $.50 a piece. So how much is it sold for? YOu ready? $500. The doc also showed me how he found some equipment sold for labs going for hundreds of dollars selling in asia for a fraction of that.
You know, in the news you read about how we will need the money to meed exploding healthcare costs. The article above talks about it. But when do you hear about investigating such costs? Why are they going up? I understand demand and supply, but you're telling me there isn't a viable competitor making it cheaper? How is it in other parts of the world, these plastic or what have you things are cheaper but not here? We need to tackle the costs, my friends.
Lastly, what spooks me about "universal health care" is the waiting. Yes, I've seen the documentaries that show a lot of the so-called long waits are overblown. I've seen Sicko. But I also have family in Canada, in Kichiner, and the one that sounds like Mississippi. They tell me that Sicko isn't telling the whole story. And then you hear about the rationing. Look you could make the argument that thats what we got going on now. No argument from me there. But I want a back door if the government says it is making cutbacks and rationalizes that because I'm deemed too costly that the "cheaper" alternative is what will be given even if it doesn't do jack. At that point, perhaps we should have the ability to buy a suppliment that will cover instances that the government won't pay.
All I know, is that a lot of people can't afford health insurance. The insurance companies are trying to screw over their customers. But we also can't have these multi-week waiting periods even for something as an x-ray. And we sure as hell can't have rationed health care....be it in a nationalized health care or semi-private one!
Self employed, I went through a period of no real health insurance suppliment to my Medicare (I'm disabled). Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois wanted North of $650 a month for me for regular insurance, half that for suppliment. Ended up going to Humana for about $100 a month with one of their (now realized) awful Medicare Advantage plans.
Yes, their premiums are reasonable- but they are, quite literally, major medical only with huge deductibles. My son's birth was on NASE- $6000 out of pocket for the co-pay on an $8000 bill.
Needless to say, I was very happy when I got the state job for a while and got off of NASE and on to Providence.
But now I'm looking for self-employed again, and this time around, I can't afford the huge deductibles. Oregon Medical Insurance Pool, though, looks like an option- and now that we've been denied a few times, we may be eligible for it.
-------------------------------------
Executive compensation is inversely proportional to morality and ethics.
Its almost financially prohibitive to start up a company in that state. I was watching Meg Whitman from eBay being interviewed and she echoed what a friend of mine said to me years ago when he was looking to expand. She was going on about how eBay needed to open up a new facility and that it took 2 years just to open up a new office with a server farm and reams of forms that for the most part duplicated each other's purpose. Now Frank, my friend, had a small metal shop that made parts for body shops somewhere near LA. Frank's a good guy, not some plutocrat and he never hired an illegal. Well too wanted to open up a new shop back in '92. He had purchased a second home to be near his mom in the center of the state and saw a good business opportunity. I'll tell you, body shops can be a good enterprise! Well here he is trying to open up that second shop and he too has to go through the beuracracy. Years later, he has to close up that second shop, why? Costs and taxes he says. And last year he closed up his first shop and decided to go to Texas to open up and then eventually retire.
confused yet? is his post where he is pointing out we have a massive MSM manipulation going on by leaking out here and there "reports" of who needs more money, then denials of who needs money, all staged to make sure the Zombie banks get more money in the end.
I feel like I'm watching a circle jerk. No this comment is not very analytical, but there is so much corruption to me and I just don't know what to call it when one private enterprise is involved in government regulations to help them get even more money, including taxpayer money and trying to hide whatever the truth of their books is....
frankly. They won't do anything realistic on illegal immigrants or anything at any time that might upset the political oligarchy, big business runs certain areas of the state, even when they are constantly on the brink of collapse. Absolutely nothing on employment law, workplace abuses. You cannot sue for anything because of the legal system. Unless you have a multi-million dollar case, there is pretty much no way to get justice and that includes small business....
It's a shame too because they have great resources.
I lived there too and with all of the great liberal rhetoric of diversity, equality and so forth, I have never seen an area so socially stratified than there. Seriously, not a black person in Silicon valley as far as the eye can see, women clearly being subjugated to work positions less than their abilities dictate, older workers being treated like garbage...even when it's very clear they are the ones actually get the products out the door and solving problems...(due to their experience), again in tech..but the biggest thing was listening to some liberal rhetoric all the while that very person just stepped over the homeless while entering their apartment. And if someone goes down financially, you can bet no one will lift a finger to help that person....just more nice sounding rhetoric. Truly the land of the haves and the have nots.
are a project where the government and insurance companies have combined. The government has strict guidelines that the insurance company must follow the government pays the insurance companys.
Now what I find weird is that I know a lot of old people. I play piano at a senior center. The figures I hear you all coming up with are nothing , not even near what the seniors pay. Even for a non Med Advantage plan the rates I am hearing seem odd. From what the seniors tell me the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare set the rates for Medicare Advantage, the rates are not based on age/sex. There are seniors there that have plans that they pay $0 for and a lot are paying about $50. Apparently there are some plans that are about $100 a month and allow more freedom to go where you want.
I have a friend who has a 40 year old daughter that is disabled. The daughter is on Medicare. I didn't know a 40 year old could get on Medicare but he says yes if the government declares you totally disabled. Her meds are outrageously expensive. She has a Med Supp with BSBC and it only costs @$150 a month. She has a co-pay for drugs but the insuance pays for most of them. He did say something about a donut hole that the government mandated. Donut hole???
I hear the seniors at the center talk about their health stuff. It is a big deal to them. The majority like their Medicare Advantage plans. Maybe you should check out a different company. I have never ever heard any seniors talk of a $300 a month Medicare Advantage plan. If they were charging you that much I would check into fraud.
I was there to play piano the day an insurance company came to do a dog and pony show. The max premium was $100 a month and the guy said that Medicare will only allow a certain premium.
Check it out....the may owe you money.
CA in 1985. Sold my home and moved east. Every freak'in thing in that State is $$$$$$. My brother in law is selling his house for $4 million. In my State he could get 39 acres of land, a much bigger house and pay $750,000.
But yes, highlighting really helps in blog posts.
The devil is in the details but also check your sources. The lobbyists have been out in full force trying to ridicule other health care systems. The World Health Organization has a report on differing systems and also I found some very good data at the OECD.
My guess is the Obama team will simply rev up the printing presses and put more money in circulation to prop up the continued charade. What happens if they can't create money fast enough to buy the junk Tbills they are attempting to sell? No one else seems interested any longer. I just hope I won't have to pay my mortgage and fill up my car with Euros.
Your doctor hit a lot of the problems. Imagine if people just paid the poor guy when they went to see him.
When a Dr. sees a Medicare patient:
1. Physicians must make 11 decisions to select the proper Evaluation and Management (E&M) code, according to Medicare program guidelines.
2. Each decision point requires several choices.
3. There are a total of 42 choices a physician must consider in choosing the proper E&M code.
4. There are 6,144 possible combination's of items involved in properly classifying a new patient office visit
Medicare does deny claims but the people at Medicare that deny claims enjoy nearly iron-clad protection from being held accountable for their actions under "Official Immunity" and the "Medicare Preclusion Law." Under "Official Immunity,"
They cannot be held accountable as long as they were acting within the broad scope of their authority under the Medicare program-in which Medicare people write all of the rules and regulations. Under the "Medicare Preclusion Law," 42 U.S.C. Sec 405 (h), no lawsuit can be brought against a Medicare contractor or employee"
I have more on Medicare that will be provided after all the universal plans are presented.
Medical equipment is just insanely expensive. I imagine the manufacturers may do some gouging but they also may (no evidence here) probably use the best, best materials. If there is ever a failure the tort system would eat them alive. So they probably over engineer a lot of the stuff.
Anyone that is in business knows that it is the cost to defend that is the nasty item. Those small nuisance claims still need to be defended. Tort reform would help. A Physician Liability 2006 Benchmark Analysis, examining more than 47,700 claims representing more than $4.4 billion of incurred losses, found that while claim frequency is stabilizing, the average size of claims continues to increase at a rate of 6 percent a year. The average amount paid to plaintiffs increased only 3 percent, while amounts paid to defend against liability claims rose 17 percent as hospitals mount a more aggressive defense of claims.
My friend that owns a cabinet shop has seen his general liability policy go from $600 15 years ago to over $4,000. People will sue him even if they use his cabinets as a ladder and the cabinet tilts back and they fall. yep...it was one of his own real episodes.
it's also all the feeder plants.
The 250,000 figure comes from a colleague who studies the auto industry.
Auto plant shutdowns idle a lot of other workers.
Production is rarely integrated these days, meaning that assembly plants generally get their engines, trannies, and other parts from non-GM supplier plants.
It's called the multiplier effect, and it's huge in the auto industry. This is why states try to snag auto plants. A single job at an auto assembly line supports 20-30 jobs elsewhere making components.
immigrants credit cards so they could couch as legal citizens. B of A didn't care about laws, they just wanted to capture new humans. Don't the zombies always eat people?
People would not be surprised if one of the financial conglomerates fails. There would be no great panic if we kill that zombie.
Where did you get that 250,000 people are going to loose their job in Ohio? I have here in NewYork times that from the total of 244,000 jobs around the world GM will cut 47,000 jobs by the end of 2009 and 20,000 jobs cut will occur in US.
if they truly strip the shareholders, executives, bondholders of BoA and nationalize it. To me that would be a damn good thing. From firing people right and left, offshore outsourcing their jobs to giving mortgages to illegals and to their constant lobbying for more predatory consumer everything and labor arbitrage I think watching the death of BoA in it's current form would be a social godsend.
(Never mind the feeding of a Zombie of our money problem).
I bet Citigroup comes up real bad also and there is another group who got pretty much no consequence for their IPOs, inside pre-ipo stock in the 90's and they were heavily involved in pushing for the China PNTR which has cost so many U.S. jobs....so watching them go down to me, on a social basis wouldn't be too bad either.
That's leaves 2 titans running the country, Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase.
As always, keep up the good fight! We need to even things out.
I have to say thank you for posting this. Ironically enough I was at the doctors today (been having complications of sorts) and well since he had no other patients that day (odd since his office is normally busy) we chatted. The topic? Health coverage. I think he nailed it when he say the blame comes from four sides, the Government, the Insurance companies, tort and the medical equipment providers.
With the Government, he was showing me the actual forms and books they need to use. See, when you're on Medicare or Medicaid, what I learned today was that sometimes that checkup would have to be regarded as 4-5 different things. This book, actually it was three of them, had to be the size of phone books! You catagorized it wrong, and Uncle Sam won't pay you. On top of that, the rate is discounted below market prices. Now my doctor ain't cheap but he doesn't over do it either. When I had nothing, office visits were about $60, and after some in-office tests (his group invested in their own lab), my bills were around $300 tops. I've had other doctors, and have seen bills has high as $5k-9k for tests and stuff done at the hospital. But getting back to the government, he showed me the hoops he has to run through to just get paid. Indeed, this also tags with the insurance problem.
The insurance companies make him almost do the same dance. He has three ladies who just deal with the insurance and government paperwork. THe insurance companies try to screw him over more than the government, he says. He told me about things like how companies, like my Humana, will create a new plan that sounds just like the other Medicare plans but covers less. Then he told me about "Chameleons," a nickname many in his industry have dubbed to what he thinks is the biggest case of fraud yet still legalilzed. So what is he referring too? What if I told you that the insurance you think you own isn't who they really are. Case in point, he told me about how a Blue Cross Blue Shield outfit essentially rents out their name to smaller less scrupulous insurance companies. The person buying those policies are made to believe its BCBS, but in reality isn't. When that person sees the doctor and is given a bill higher than what they were told, they find out that the version of BCBS doesn't even come close to covering what the actual Blue Cross plans do. Its legal because of certain loopholes.
The insurance companies, along with the government plans (including Medicaid) have been cutting back. He showed me one sheet from 2007, one from 2008 dubbed that was part of a large folder of documents, it had a fancy title but it was basically changes to coverage and payments. He showed me how we're cutting back drastically. I asked about the private insurers, he grimmaced saying at least the government was more explicite. Some, as he explained, were going into what he termed "membership fees" for consultation. The way things are going, both the government and the insurers are pointing coverage in a direction where all one will get is as basic a care as possible. He told me, from the outlines he's seen, you really all will need is a high end nurse to do the "new physical." If you want "luxury care" you may have to pay the doctors a yearly fee for unlimited consultation. Frankly, I found this disturbing.
He then told me about how, despite not having one person in his outfit being sued, his malpractic has skyrocketed. A lot of doctors are moving out of general practice. We both could see how if a doctor screwed up he should pay. But the costs have simply gotten out of hand.
Last, but not least, there is the medical equipment providers. Now here he didn't show me as much as my friend Debrah. Debrah runs a laminating manufacturing firm in Skokie, Illinois. One of her clients, and long-time friend is this gal who I think is named Carole. Well "Carole" works for a company that sells things like stents and other such things. Debrah was thinking of setting up a company to sell these products (there isn't much demand for lamintors these days).
She learned how a lot of the stuff they buy costs literally pennies but they turn around and sell them at much higher prices. There was this little plastic thing, no bigger than the head of a pin, but tube shaped that went for I think was hip joints or something. Anyways, she said the thing costs the company literally $.50 a piece. So how much is it sold for? YOu ready? $500. The doc also showed me how he found some equipment sold for labs going for hundreds of dollars selling in asia for a fraction of that.
You know, in the news you read about how we will need the money to meed exploding healthcare costs. The article above talks about it. But when do you hear about investigating such costs? Why are they going up? I understand demand and supply, but you're telling me there isn't a viable competitor making it cheaper? How is it in other parts of the world, these plastic or what have you things are cheaper but not here? We need to tackle the costs, my friends.
Lastly, what spooks me about "universal health care" is the waiting. Yes, I've seen the documentaries that show a lot of the so-called long waits are overblown. I've seen Sicko. But I also have family in Canada, in Kichiner, and the one that sounds like Mississippi. They tell me that Sicko isn't telling the whole story. And then you hear about the rationing. Look you could make the argument that thats what we got going on now. No argument from me there. But I want a back door if the government says it is making cutbacks and rationalizes that because I'm deemed too costly that the "cheaper" alternative is what will be given even if it doesn't do jack. At that point, perhaps we should have the ability to buy a suppliment that will cover instances that the government won't pay.
All I know, is that a lot of people can't afford health insurance. The insurance companies are trying to screw over their customers. But we also can't have these multi-week waiting periods even for something as an x-ray. And we sure as hell can't have rationed health care....be it in a nationalized health care or semi-private one!
Self employed, I went through a period of no real health insurance suppliment to my Medicare (I'm disabled). Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois wanted North of $650 a month for me for regular insurance, half that for suppliment. Ended up going to Humana for about $100 a month with one of their (now realized) awful Medicare Advantage plans.
Call me skeptical.
So, James. Tell us how you really feel.;-)
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