Do you have insurance?

[Immanuel]

Well there is no 'perfect' solution. This healthcare reform is certainly not even remotely a "government solution". It is giving increased amount of customers to private companies, so it's exactly the opposite of a government solution. I still think that a public option would have been the best choice as it would have implemented a way for people to keep their insurance if they were truly happy, but provided an alternate option for those that wanted to find something cheaper and to fit their needs. It also would have been an excellent way of increasing competition in the marketplace which in turn would result in lowering of prices to stay competitive.

I would agree with you, except that the way the "public option" was designed was that it essentially either drove the private insurer out of business or it made them a puppet of the federal government. They were severely limited in their abilities to compete i.e. pricing, deductibles, coverages etc. and on top of all of that the public option had the backing of the government which meant that they could operate at a loss basically indefinitely and drive private insurers into bankruptcy. Competition would have been strangled.

Immie

If private insurance offered a superior product then they wouldn't have to fear losing customers to the public option. However, if they did lose their customers in droves, wouldn't that say something about the quality of what they were offering if people were s willing to jump ship to the government plan?

Problem with that is that the public option part of the plan included limits on what private insurers could offer and the prices they could charge which is what made them puppets of the federal government.

How can they offer a superior plan if they can not tailor their plans to what their customers want nor price them competitively?

Immie

 

[RDD_1210]

I would agree with you, except that the way the "public option" was designed was that it essentially either drove the private insurer out of business or it made them a puppet of the federal government. They were severely limited in their abilities to compete i.e. pricing, deductibles, coverages etc. and on top of all of that the public option had the backing of the government which meant that they could operate at a loss basically indefinitely and drive private insurers into bankruptcy. Competition would have been strangled.

Immie

If private insurance offered a superior product then they wouldn't have to fear losing customers to the public option. However, if they did lose their customers in droves, wouldn't that say something about the quality of what they were offering if people were s willing to jump ship to the government plan?

Problem with that is that the public option part of the plan included limits on what private insurers could offer and the prices they could charge which is what made them puppets of the federal government.

How can they offer a superior plan if they can not tailor their plans to what their customers want nor price them competitively?

Immie

Good points. I think that there should be limited restrictions on what private insurers can be prevented from doing if a public option was available. The market would help dictate what private insurance is offering. But this only works if the public option is robust enough to really give people a choice.

 

[RDD_1210]

Well there is no 'perfect' solution. This healthcare reform is certainly not even remotely a "government solution". It is giving increased amount of customers to private companies, so it's exactly the opposite of a government solution. I still think that a public option would have been the best choice as it would have implemented a way for people to keep their insurance if they were truly happy, but provided an alternate option for those that wanted to find something cheaper and to fit their needs. It also would have been an excellent way of increasing competition in the marketplace which in turn would result in lowering of prices to stay competitive.

And I think a lot of that would happen if 'we' (government) would let the market do that. Of course a lot of criticism and stereotypes are levied against the insurance industry. Reality paints a different picture. The evil profit motive they're pursuing? This is an industry who's proft margins are typically in the single digits. And while it's true that private business is driven by the profit motive which some label as evil, the fact is the best means of pursuing profits is to do what your customers want. There is so much government regulation of the health insurance industry and health care in general the end result of which is a business that can't provide what it's customes want and a customer base that is apathetic about the service it recievs. That later needs to be part of the solution also; people taking more responsibility for the health and health care dollars.

We would need to correctly identify our goals as well. Is the goal really to get everyone insured, even those that can't afford it? I don't think so. The goal is for people who can't afford health care to still get the health care they need. A public option doesn't do that. Insurance can't do that, UHC can't do that. There are always going to be people that can't afford it. How do we solve that? A cheap public option doesn't cut. It's not an issue of they can afford this, but not this. It's an issue of they can't afford anything.

Like I said before, there is no magic bullet fix. However there are ways to drastically improve the system. There will always be people who can afford even the most basic coverage, however the issue that a public option would address is helping those people who do work and want affordable, reliable health coverage an option that wouldn't eat up a ridiculous amount of their take home pay.

I am all for free enterprise and making a profit off of what you provide....except when it comes to health insurance. I have a hard time feeling bad for an industry who makes money by denying medical care to people. Private insurance has inserted themselves into the healthcare equation and they are not providing any actual care yet they take in billions in profits, solely off of their ability to deny claims and coverage.

 

[Immanuel]

If private insurance offered a superior product then they wouldn't have to fear losing customers to the public option. However, if they did lose their customers in droves, wouldn't that say something about the quality of what they were offering if people were s willing to jump ship to the government plan?

Problem with that is that the public option part of the plan included limits on what private insurers could offer and the prices they could charge which is what made them puppets of the federal government.

How can they offer a superior plan if they can not tailor their plans to what their customers want nor price them competitively?

Immie

Good points. I think that there should be limited restrictions on what private insurers can be prevented from doing if a public option was available. The market would help dictate what private insurance is offering. But this only works if the public option is robust enough to really give people a choice.

I think the public option would be good if it actually had to compete in the marketplace. Unfortunately, that would not be the case. Government backing would mean that it had an unlimited income source (our tax dollars), it also means that the plans would not have to cover the administrative expenses nor corporate taxes. The public option would be exempted from being required to cover those kinds of expense as they would be passed on to the tax payers. This would in effect allow the public option to lower their premiums (because we all would be paying administrative expenses with our tax dollars) to such a point that no private insurer could possibly compete.

Lower premiums seems to be a great idea, but truthfully there is more to this than just lower premiums. Such things as quality of the plans and how about quality of our health care? What happens when the government plan is the only game in town? Doctors will be told that they will earn $150,000/year and no more. Note: just throwing a figure out there. Competition for health services falls and where are we now?

Some liberals say that it works in other nations, why won't it here? I don't know that it won't work here but such a plan is not, I repeat NOT, the United States of America that I grew up in and quite frankly not the world I care to live in in the future. I happen to believe in the principle of all of us being able to negotiate our wages and run our own businesses let alone lives.

Immie

 

[Bern80]

Like I said before, there is no magic bullet fix. However there are ways to drastically improve the system. There will always be people who can afford even the most basic coverage, however the issue that a public option would address is helping those people who do work and want affordable, reliable health coverage an option that wouldn't eat up a ridiculous amount of their take home pay.

Define ridiculous I guess. Stats from the department of labor indicate that the avg. american household spends about 1700 a year on health care premiums (that's my guestimate currently since this ends in 2008) The 2011 Statistical Abstract: Health Expenditures.) that's about $65 a paycheck. Can you make it less than that, but not zero and have it be of any significance?

I am all for free enterprise and making a profit off of what you provide....except when it comes to health insurance. I have a hard time feeling bad for an industry who makes money by denying medical care to people. Private insurance has inserted themselves into the healthcare equation and they are not providing any actual care yet they take in billions in profits, solely off of their ability to deny claims and coverage.

Again 'billions of dollars in profits' sounds evil but if your expenses are in the billions as well it puts it in a different perspective, but that's the reality given their single digit profit margins.

 

[RDD_1210]

Like I said before, there is no magic bullet fix. However there are ways to drastically improve the system. There will always be people who can afford even the most basic coverage, however the issue that a public option would address is helping those people who do work and want affordable, reliable health coverage an option that wouldn't eat up a ridiculous amount of their take home pay.

Define ridiculous I guess. Stats from the department of labor indicate that the avg. american household spends about 1700 a year on health care premiums (that's my guestimate currently since this ends in 2008) The 2011 Statistical Abstract: Health Expenditures.) that's about $65 a paycheck. Can you make it less than that, but not zero and have it be of any significance?

I am all for free enterprise and making a profit off of what you provide....except when it comes to health insurance. I have a hard time feeling bad for an industry who makes money by denying medical care to people. Private insurance has inserted themselves into the healthcare equation and they are not providing any actual care yet they take in billions in profits, solely off of their ability to deny claims and coverage.

Again 'billions of dollars in profits' sounds evil but if your expenses are in the billions as well it puts it in a different perspective, but that's the reality given their single digit profit margins.

Sure, it's a matter of perspective. I'm just coming from the perspective that NO profit should be made off of the denial of healthcare to people who need it.

 

[Douger]

Insurance is for pussies who can't take care of themselves or fucking sowshillist, Marxsisistic, commie, pinko, fags.
If they iant got cash let the bastards rot in the parking lot.. Same with those old leeches on sowshillistic sekyurity and medicaids. Fuckem.They had 65 years to save up to take care of themselves.
God Blast.

The murkin Patriot.

 

[Bern80]

Sure, it's a matter of perspective. I'm just coming from the perspective that NO profit should be made off of the denial of healthcare to people who need it.

Like no profit EVER, ever? What if the consumer is in violation of the their insurance agreement? Do they then not have the right to deny benefits?

 

[RDD_1210]

Sure, it's a matter of perspective. I'm just coming from the perspective that NO profit should be made off of the denial of healthcare to people who need it.

Like no profit EVER, ever? What if the consumer is in violation of the their insurance agreement? Do they then not have the right to deny benefits?

Well I know the no profits idea is the extreme and not practical right now, but I'm willing to compromise.

If a consumer is in violation of their agreement then denial is certainly an option but thats not what causes claims denials in most cases.

 

[Bern80]

Sure, it's a matter of perspective. I'm just coming from the perspective that NO profit should be made off of the denial of healthcare to people who need it.

Like no profit EVER, ever? What if the consumer is in violation of the their insurance agreement? Do they then not have the right to deny benefits?

Well I know the no profits idea is the extreme and not practical right now, but I'm willing to compromise.

If a consumer is in violation of their agreement then denial is certainly an option but thats not what causes claims denials in most cases.

I ask because I can see it from both sides and working in a situation that is somewhat analagous. The company I work for builds a product that has a warranty on it. This warranty agreement could be compared to the terms of your healthcare bill. Obviously we want our customers to be happy or we won't have any. Similarily, I would think an insurance company wants its customers to remain living even if just to serve the profit motive. Our warranty covers parts and labor on manufacturing defects and we don't have any issue warrantying those cases and even when it's a gray area most of the time we will side with the customer. But we certainly aren't going to cover under warranty a case that is clearly outside the terms of the warranty. In terms of good PR we don't want to 'take' our customers, but we certainly don't want to be taken by them either. Contrary to popular opinion the customer is NOT always right. I don't think that is something unique to us and probably applies to most businesses including health insurance companies.

 

[Old Rocks]

Well, I have had MediCare for the past year and one half, and my employer pays the secondary.

 

[Wright]

With all the talk of being mandated to carry insurance and premiums going up and the failure of third party payment, I'm curious how many of you do and don't have insurance right now. And for those of you who are insured, if you want to post who your insurer is that would be interesting, too.

I'll start. I'm insured through my employer in the small group market. I don't have a choice of insurers so I have Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield.

I'm insured through my wife. Since are premiums went through the roof this year, we were put in a situation where we had to put our kids on CHiP.

Most people I work with had to switch insurance or drop it and put thier kids on CHip.

But that's is what the dems wanted. So while some people are surprised at how high they went, don't worry, the cure to it is the public option, which was the goal all along.

To make us demand they take away our independence.

This is exactly what the Dems wanted. To have people get on government health care in one way or another. Rise the costs of insurance and force people onto government health care plans. Now insurance companies are raising their rates and more people are getting on gov health care plans.

 

[Wright]

How about the government just get out of my pocket and stop regulating businesses to force them into things they do not want to do. Why do I have to pay for abortion insurance if I want health insurance? I am never going to have an abortion nor will I ever marry a woman who has had or would have an abortion. Why am I being forced to pay for things that I know I will never use? Because the gov told the insurance companies they had to cover it. Now that insurance companies have to cover these things, the costs of premiums has gone up. The government is forcing companies to sell stuff the company wouldn't have sold in the first place causing us to pay more.

Get the government out of our business and keep them in their business. Protecting our rights, not forcing us to buy things we don't want.

 

[Wright]

One more thing. You need to change your poll so that it is a little more fair. You need to put an options in there as "I don't have insurance cause I can't afford it" and "I don't have insurance cause I don't want it cause I can pay my own medical costs." which are actually cheaper when you do not go through insurance. About 35% cheaper at the emergency room at the hospital in our city and 40% cheaper at my clinic. Get off your health care and pay for your own medical care. My employer gave me the option, health insurance or an extra $800 in my pocket. I took the extra $800 and I am saving a ton of money over having insurance.

 

[Douger]

Heres a nice quote off survival blog from a truly brainwashed, utterly moronic, murkin.

Gregg Riggs
January 19th, 2011 at 3:22 pm

Huh. Well, we could always go back to what worked in the earliest days of the nation. Ya know? Like entangling alliances with no one? That’s a start. End the welfare state. End the war on drugs. Hell, end ALL wars and bring ALL troops home and put them to work manufacturing. End all welfare, including Social Security. End all tax-funded education. Drop a bomb on all the taxation and restrictions that favor corporate business and hamper and small business entrepreneurs and owners.

Sounds horrific, doesn’t it? Well, it worked just fine in 1776. America prospered and became the industrial Goliath of the world. We were the envy of everyone. We were the best educated, had the best standard of living, had some of the most healthy and long-lived citizens, etc. Our system was so efficient that the old kingships of Europe had to mock our system just to keep up. America has long squeezed the last dregs out of that massive prosperity, and now we are living on the debt and credit we earned in that period of lush growth.

What to do with the poor and the needy? Give them to the Church! That’s what Christians are for! Being a Christian, I am appalled that the “Sons of God” have turned their responsibility over to the State! The Church of Jesus Christ MUST step in and take care of the needy! Let The Church educate and teach the youth! If you’re unGodly, fine, let your kids learn somewhere else, or teach them yourself, but NO MORE tax funded education! But the Churches languish in their big buildings with nothing to do. They have their fancy praise teams, their high-paid pastors, their workbook studies, their conferences and summits, their “christian” yoga, with no end in sight! While, literally, the people next door are lost with no hope of ever being witnessed to. Christians have lost touch with their great Commission. They have given over all their responsibilities to the State and a handful of distant, unknown, unsung missionaries.

Sound like a rant? You bet it is. After all, how can you blame a Godless society on the lost? The only way the devil could have taken America down was if America’s Christians stood down. Sadly, this is the case. Is it too late? NO WAY! With God, all things are possible. It’s revival time, People, and small measures will avail us nothing. Those who know Christ, listen to your hearts. Do you not hear the altar call? It’s time to shine, and shine to whole nation!

The best place to start? Tear down all the false and graven images in D.C. Destroy the marbled images of the old Roman and Greek gods. Dunk the “Statue of Liberty” into the sea and be done with her filthy symbolism! Push over the obelisk and bury it in the ground. Be done with praising false gods, false principles, false laws. Let us worship one God, and one only. Let us turn away from mannon and turn to the Almighty.

This is for Christians. The lost will hate it, and I’m truly sorry for that. I wish we could sit down with a cup of coffee and have a long talk. For the lost, I have a great compassion. For the “Sons of God,” I have only a war cry: “THE ONLY KING IS KING JESUS!”

 

[editec]

I'm covered.

My son isn't.

Yes he has a job...but no HC insurance.

And THAT is the problem, folks.

 

[Bern80]

I'm covered.

My son isn't.

Yes he has a job...but no HC insurance.

And THAT is the problem, folks.

Does your son think it's a problem? Why doesn't he just go out and buy a plan if he thinks it's a problem?

 

[Mini 14]

BCBS Blue.....I provide my own (I own my own business).

I do not offer coverage to my employees, though I did until Obama raised COBRA requirements. I actually provided it free of any cost to the employee, including family coverage, until COBRA was expanded. At that point, I simply couldn't afford to any longer (not sure I could "afford" it when I was providing it, but I felt it was the right thing to do).

Now I offer an allowance for those who obtain their own policies (not through another employer, or through their spouse's employer).

If the mandate had been enacted (it won't be), I would have required proof of insurance as a requirement for employment, and continued employment with any of my companies (as required by the IRS).

 

[p kirkes]

Interestingly, my oldest, 44, a healthy nonsmoker, left his six figure salaried job to pursue personal endeavors but finds himself without health insurance.

He caught a nasty chest (bronchial) infection and visited a doctor. Expecting to pay a hefty fee he was surprised to find that the cost of his doctor's visit was only $38.00 and his prescription medications were free. This is current as of today.

The office staff told him that the unemployed are afforded this low fee and that certain pharmacies have donated drugs to the unemployed. Don't think this is Obama Care, just local help for the jobless.
Works for him, gift horse and all that.

 

[hboats]

Interestingly, my oldest, 44, a healthy nonsmoker, left his six figure salaried job to pursue personal endeavors but finds himself without health insurance.

He caught a nasty chest (bronchial) infection and visited a doctor. Expecting to pay a hefty fee he was surprised to find that the cost of his doctor's visit was only $38.00 and his prescription medications were free. This is current as of today.

The office staff told him that the unemployed are afforded this low fee and that certain pharmacies have donated drugs to the unemployed. Don't think this is Obama Care, just local help for the jobless.
Works for him, gift horse and all that.

But, but, but. All of these uninsured need insurance!!!!!!!!

We can't have them running around uninsured!!!!!!

I'm sorry, but the above story blows the whole premise of Obamacare right out of the water. There are plenty of places to go for health care without insurance that won't cause you to go into bankruptcy.

However it is just easier for politicians to try to make it appear that anyone without insurance is going to have to file bankruptcy because of one illness.

I asked this a long time ago, and never got an answer, but here is the main question that has never been answered in this whole health care debate. How many of those "30 million" uninsured Americans are uninsured because they want to be uninsured? Not because they can't afford it, but because they just don't want to buy health insurance.

Rick