A Family of Four in Maine can expect to pay $1,876 a month for HI starting in July

[uscitizen]

healthy peoples insurance goes away when they get laid off.

 

[Old Rocks]

Connecting the health insurance to the job is insanity. It creates a situation that snowballs an economic slowdown.

You get laid off, and lose your health insurance. Your mortgage or rent is such that you cannot afford the Cobra payments on unemployment. A family member gets sick, you have to pay out of pocket for that, at several times the cost that the hospitals charge insurance companies, and now you have a family living out of a car, another home in foreclosure.

Is this truly the best this nation can do? In spite of the examples of all the other industrial nations, we cannot do any better than this?

 

[SpidermanTuba]

People always have the option to tell the insurance companies to GFT.

Not if they have cancer.

 

[Political Junky]

Good reason for the GOP plan to let them buy insurance from another state.

That appears to be the republican solution. What bull shit.

 

[jillian]

Good reason for the GOP plan to let them buy insurance from another state.

No. It's not.

1. It would allow them to incorporate in the states with the most lax regulations like the banks do; and

2. WHERE ARE THE PROVIDERS GOING TO COME FROM IF YOU LIVE IN NY AND YOUR PARTICIPATING PROVIDERS ARE IN MAINE?

 

[Charles Stucker]

Clearly the only possible solution is to give even more power to the central government.

Because their track record is so wonderful.

Does anyone really need a sarcasm smiolely at this point?

 

[SpidermanTuba]

Because their track record is so wonderful.

It really is. Best track record in the world in fact.

 

[Vanquish]

So in an age where monied interests are already fucking over the system, what did the Supreme Court do? It allowed corporations to spend unlimited amounts paying people off. How did they do that? By ignoring decades of precedent.

 

[Gadawg73]

I am a lifelong conservative.
This is the GOP way of doing things. I have a Health Savings Account which is a GOP initiated and passed law. The HSA allows me to put $5950 a year tax free into the account for paying health care bills.
But this is the real world. I pay 11K for health insurance and then add in the 5950 I can contribute into my HSA yearly so we have 17K.
How many Americans can afford to put 17K into health care each year? GOP bills benefit ONLY the upper middle class upward.
Who here is stupie enough to believe that insurance companies will lower their bills with intra state selling given they have total immunity from anti trust laws?
Sort of like the morons that believe "tort reform" lowers insurance rates. DUH.
The system is broken and anyone that denies it is a complete dumbass.

 

[SpidermanTuba]

The system is broken and anyone that denies it is a complete dumbass.

What do you think is broken?

Some on the left says the insurance companies, but I'm not so sure about that.

Seems to me its the medical supply companies fucking everyone over. They convince the doctors everyone needs super-expensive treatments, then the insurance companies have to pay for all that, so of course they have to up their rates. And not just the supplies themselves, but the way they are administered.

Take these CPAP machines, breathing machines for sleep apnea. I likely have sleep apnea, because now that i have one, I can finally sleep well and wake up feeling energized. I skipped the whole "sleep study" thing because I didn't see the point in paying a $500 deductible - on top of whatever thousands of dollars the insurance company would have had to pay - to see if a $300 machine can help me. Makes no sense. Just buy the machine and see if it helps. It did.

Now I'm sure my doctor would be enraged to find out I just went out and bought a CPAP instead of having my insurance company pay him bank to watch me snore all night.

 

[HUGGY]

Health Care: Must-Read Of The Day - Swampland - TIME.com

AP reports that insurance companies in at least four states are raising their premiums for individual insurance policies (those that people have to buy themselves, because they don't get coverage from an employer) by 15% or more. To give you a sense of what we are talking about if these rates go into effect, a family of four in Maine (which is a relatively poor state) can expect to pay $1,876 a month--about $22,500 a year--for health insurance, starting in July.

And this is only the beginning:

"You're going to see rate increases of 20, 25, 30 percent" for individual health policies in the near term, Sandy Praeger, chairwoman of the health insurance and managed care committee for the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, predicted Friday.

Health Care Reform, we don't need that!

Thoughts on this USMB?

And how do our Maine residents here feel about this?

So what is the problem? We have the best health care system in the world. Just ask anyone on "The List".

If you are too lazy or stupid to budget 20,000 dollars a year to keep your dumb ass family in band aides and tylenol then you don't deserve health care.

 

[Charles Stucker]

Because their track record is so wonderful.

It really is. Best track record in the world in fact.

You forgot the sarcasm smilely too.