Stop the (hate)anger and fear

[LilOlLady]

STOP THE (HATE)ANGER AND FEAR

that the people at town hall meetings have of losing their private HC and of it changing. The hate for Obama will remain because it have nothing to do with HC. They should not be allowed to drop their private HC and enroll in government HC because it is cheaper, acceptance of pre-existing illness or major illness will not be affected. It should be mandatory the they keep their private HC with the services it provides and for the price they have to pay.
Government HC for the 47 million who do not have HC would not change private HC but would allow them to obtain HC at an affordable price.

Many of the 47 million that have lost their HC have not affected private HC at all. If private HC keep those they already have, government run HC will not change them and will not affect them at all.

Government run HC may not be perfect in the beginning but it is a start and time will improve it just like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have improved. If it is not passed, we have nothing to work on to improve.

Status quo is not a plan. Cost savings will pay for the plan.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

The 47 million includes 12 million Illegal Aliens

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Health Care Reform

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money”-Margaret Thatcher.

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people’s money. These deficits are simply not sustainable and they are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation or they will bankrupt us.

While we clearly need health care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and moves us much closer to a complete governmental takeover of our health care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the exact opposite direction-toward less governmental control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

1. Remove the legal obstacles which slow the creation of high deductible health insurance plans and Health Savings Accounts. The combination of high deductible health insurance and Health Savings Accounts is one solution that could solve many of our health care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high deductible health insurance plan, and provides up to $1,800 per year in additional health care dollars through deposits into their own Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness. Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan’s costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of team member satisfaction.

2. Change the tax laws so that that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have exactly the same tax benefits. Right now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible for employers but private health insurance is not. This is unfair.

3. Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that health insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable everywhere.

4. Repeal all government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance many billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual health insurance customer preferences and not through special interest lobbying.

5. Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors into paying insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are ultimately being passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

6. Make health care costs transparent so that consumers will understand what health care treatments cost. How many people know what their last doctor’s visit cost? What other goods or services do we as consumers buy without knowing how much they will cost us? We need a system where people can compare and contrast costs and services.

7. Enact Medicare reform: we need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and move towards greater patient empowerment and responsibility.

8. Permit individuals to make voluntary tax deductible donations on their IRS tax forms to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP or any other government program.

Many promoters of health care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care-to universal and equal access to doctors, medicines, and hospitals. While all of us can empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have any more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have an intrinsic right to food, clothing, owning their own homes, a car or a personal computer? Health care is a service which we all need at some point in our lives, but just like food, clothing, and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually-beneficial market exchanges rather than through government mandates. A careful reading of both The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter, because there isn’t any. This “right” has never existed in America.

Even in countries such as Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by governmental bureaucrats what health care treatments and medicines they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce and expensive treatments. Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million citizens. At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund on their behalf. Our Canadian and British team members express their benefit preferences very clearly-they want supplemental health care more than additional paid time off, larger donations to their retirement plans, or greater food discounts; they want health care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health care benefit dollars to spend if they already have an “intrinsic right to health care”? The answer is clear-no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.-or in any other country.

Rather than increase governmental spending and control, what we need to do is address the root causes of disease and poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for their own health. Unfortunately many of our health care problems are self-inflicted with over 2/3 of Americans now overweight and 1/3 obese. Most of the diseases which are both killing us and making health care so expensive-heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and obesity, which account for about 70% of all health care spending, are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal or no alcohol consumption, and other healthy lifestyle choices."

John Mackey CEO Whole Foods

 

[Soggy in NOLA]

Government run HC may not be perfect in the beginning but it is a start and time will improve it just like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have improved.

You realize, with this statement, you have just declared to the world that you are a complete moron?

 

[Mr. Peepers]

Many promoters of health care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care-to universal and equal access to doctors, medicines, and hospitals. While all of us can empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have any more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have an intrinsic right to food, clothing, owning their own homes, a car or a personal computer?

And this, Mr. Mackey, is why I will no longer shop at Whole Foods. I think that my brother, who works 60+ hours a week as a chef (something he loves dearly) for $10 an hour (typical pay unless you're Mario Batali) deserves to have a health insurance option since his restaurant does not offer insurance. I think that young entrepreneurs and kids that have just graduated college should have access to affordable health insurance. That is what you're missing, Mr. "I got mine so screw you" Mackey. There is no ACCESS to affordable health insurance nor health care if you are not destitute nor 70 years old. People making less than 50K have a hard time coming up with the premiums and deductables for individual health insurance. THERE ARE NO LOW COST OPTIONS!!! Asshole!

 

[CrusaderFrank]

Many promoters of health care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care-to universal and equal access to doctors, medicines, and hospitals. While all of us can empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have any more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have an intrinsic right to food, clothing, owning their own homes, a car or a personal computer?

And this, Mr. Mackey, is why I will no longer shop at Whole Foods. I think that my brother, who works 60+ hours a week as a chef (something he loves dearly) for $10 an hour (typical pay unless you're Mario Batali) deserves to have a health insurance option since his restaurant does not offer insurance. I think that young entrepreneurs and kids that have just graduated college should have access to affordable health insurance. That is what you're missing, Mr. "I got mine so screw you" Mackey. There is no ACCESS to affordable health insurance nor health care if you are not destitute nor 70 years old. People making less than 50K have a hard time coming up with the premiums and deductables for individual health insurance. THERE ARE NO LOW COST OPTIONS!!! Asshole!

I go to Whole Foods every day now, I'll buy stuff and then either just throw it away for give it to homeless people

 

[Mad Scientist]

STOP THE (HATE)ANGER AND FEAR

You forgot "Ugly". Those are the words Dems use to describe the opposition when they can't defend their own positions. And they say it in "hushed tones" of course.

Government run HC may not be perfect in the beginning but it is a start and time will improve it just like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have improved. If it is not passed, we have nothing to work on to improve.
Status quo is not a plan. Cost savings will pay for the plan.

What Obama office do you work out of Troll?

 

[auditor0007]

1. Remove the legal obstacles which slow the creation of high deductible health insurance plans and Health Savings Accounts. The combination of high deductible health insurance and Health Savings Accounts is one solution that could solve many of our health care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high deductible health insurance plan, and provides up to $1,800 per year in additional health care dollars through deposits into their own Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness. Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan’s costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of team member satisfaction.

Plans like this make the most sense. However, everyone should be able to purchase such a plan whether it is employer provided or purchased privately. And rates should not be based on how many employees each company has. Everyone should be pooled as a whole based on all clients of a company's policy holders. Self-pay for the basics would reduce costs drastically.

 

[Single Dad]

The OP is nothing more than boiler plate Dem Lib talking points. I hope it really grates your ass the way we are beating the crap out of you socialists at the town hall settings! I celebrate your pain.

 

[LilOlLady]

The Socialism of Social Security
by Jacob G. Hornberger, December 2003 [Posted June 11, 2004]



The crown jewel of the socialist welfare state in America is Social Security. Rooted in the socialist predilections of Otto von Bismarck, the “iron chancellor” of Germany in the late 1800s, Social Security is one of the most immoral, anti-family socialist programs in America today. It also perfectly embodies the American people’s denigration of the great God-given gift of free will.
The Socialism of Social Security

 

[LilOlLady]

To be accurate for a medical system to be truly
socialistic the government must own and manage every aspect of it including all
of the hospitals, clinics and so forth.
Additionally, all persons involved, doctors, nurses, administers, &
etc., would all be employees of the state as it is with the both the VA and the
British health care systems. Nobody,
however, is proposing anything of the sort for us in America and H.R. 676 does not
create anything like that either.
Medicare under H.R. 676 will be just a significantly better way of
dealing with the health insurance issue than the private sector has been able
to provide, nothing more.

I would further ad that Medicare is no more socialism than
any other form of insurance, private or otherwise. The fact that it is managed and coordinated
by the government does not detract from its value in the view of many if not
most main stream thinking people. It is
certainly much less socialistic than government run police or fire services for
example which most rational people would agree are essential and appropriate
functions of government. Having said all
that however, you are certainly entitled to your own opinion but not, as they
say, to your own facts or definitions.
For example, your 60-40 overhead claim is grossly out of whack. In fact Medicare’s overhead is a trifling 5%
compared to the staggering double digit waste imposed on the system by private
sector insurance companies.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

To be accurate for a medical system to be truly
socialistic the government must own and manage every aspect of it including all
of the hospitals, clinics and so forth.
Additionally, all persons involved, doctors, nurses, administers, &
etc., would all be employees of the state as it is with the both the VA and the
British health care systems. Nobody,
however, is proposing anything of the sort for us in America and H.R. 676 does not
create anything like that either.
Medicare under H.R. 676 will be just a significantly better way of
dealing with the health insurance issue than the private sector has been able
to provide, nothing more.

I would further ad that Medicare is no more socialism than
any other form of insurance, private or otherwise. The fact that it is managed and coordinated
by the government does not detract from its value in the view of many if not
most main stream thinking people. It is
certainly much less socialistic than government run police or fire services for
example which most rational people would agree are essential and appropriate
functions of government. Having said all
that however, you are certainly entitled to your own opinion but not, as they
say, to your own facts or definitions.
For example, your 60-40 overhead claim is grossly out of whack. In fact Medicare’s overhead is a trifling 5%
compared to the staggering double digit waste imposed on the system by private
sector insurance companies.

The government buries Medicare real overhead number in the rest of the budget. There's no possibly way it's 5%