Three worthy points of the article.
1. It does not list that insurance premiums in the Baucus plan will cap at 13% of gross income for those within 400% above the poverty level. I missed the cap for those making over 400% of the poverty level.
2. When will they reform casualty and property insurance???
3. It costs this much without the govt, oh yeah, public option.
The converse to the people currently without health care is that almost 85% are covered. If the pols would put emphasis on cost containment and tort reform this number would certainly increase, wouldn’t it? I don’t understand why overhaul is the way the debate is headed.
AS SOON AS THIS “PLAN” IS TO BE VOTED ON, SOME DUMB LIBERAL DEMO WILL AMEND THE BILL AND ADD “PUBLIC OPTION” AND “INSURE ILLEGAL ALIENS”.
LET’S SLOW DOWN AND TAKE IT ONE STEP AT A TIIME. THE REASON MEDICARE AND MEDICAID ARE BROKE IS DUE TO “ILLEGAL ALIENS” GETTING THIS COVERAGE WITH NO $$ PAID INTO THE SYSTEM! ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CROSS THE BORDER AND HAVE A CHILD IN THE US AND “WHAM” YOU CAN HAVE WELFARE, FREE MEDICAL, FREE DENTAL, FREE EDUCATION, FREE
EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!
Remember open rating for Workers Compensation in 1995? Rates were dramatically reduced when true competition was unleashed. Insurance producers had to hustle to retain and write new business then, now it’s the Health Insurance Industries turn to feel the wrath?
so they are going to start charging the insurance company’s $6 Billion in fees starting in 2010, who the hell do they think is going to foot that bill????
“the six senators have raised $10.7 million since 1989 from the industries and people with the most at stake financially in the overhaul effort. That’s an average of nearly $1.8 million apiece over that period, more than triple the roughly $560,000 average for all other senators and representatives.
The figures are based on data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which studies political spending, and actually understate health-related contributions. The center’s researchers include only some campaign donations from health insurers in the health category because they lump many health insurers’ donations into a separate category for insurance, real estate and financial firms.”
So how in practice does this public option differ from auto and work comp residual market plans where people and businesses not eligible for coverage in the standard market have a way to get required coverage. Losses are then shared amongst all shareholders through assessments against insurers which are immediately passed along as higher premiums.
If you don’t have some sort of public option, where do sick people find affordable insurance after they get laid off, graduate from college and come off their parents policy before getting a job, etc. etc. etc.
We need a system where it is reasonably possible for everyone to obtain insurance. Perhaps it’s only major medical or trauma care, but being sick should not automatically destroy a person financially.
Almost everything I read in these comments involves the writers personal bank account and how it might be threatened. I know it’s expensive people, but buy a heart, would ya!
Congress and Obama should read “The New Health Insurance Solution” by Paul Zane Pilzer – dated but still relevant. There are State options for people who can’t get health insurance and if they are too poor to afford it they get Medicaid. What am I not getting about there being health care crises? It’s a medical cost containment crises that will either accelerated or cause the quality of care to decrease when competition is eliminated.
The reason the debate is about overhaul rather than true reform is that the Obama administration doesn’t simply want to fix various parts of the current system….they want a single payer system!! Obama is on record stating he favors a single payer system! So you can bet that buried somewhere in the thousands of pages of the various health care bills, the seeds are planted toward eventually having a single payer system. They are very skillful at spinning this whole issue to make it sound like what we want to hear. But mark my words, they will eventually get the single payer system they so desperately want. Then we’re all screwed.
I hear Washington talk “Health Care Reform” then beat the insurance industry. The doctors and hospitals are the health care industry. As long as a doctor can charge $200 for an office visit and the lab drawing blood charges over $1,000 and Washington does not address this, where is the reform?
So now if an individual chooses NOT to buy health insurance, he pays a penalty?
About 15 million of the uninsured are twenty somethings who could afford $75 a month for a Hospital/Surgical major medical policy, and choose not to. So now the government will penalize them if they don’t pay up. Make no mistake, health care reform for that group is not about covering uninsureds. Its about making them pay for something they don’t want, and don’t need. Oh, and without their money, the whole thing doesn’t fly.
Welcome to change, democrat style.
I agree why the heck do we have to support those that come here just for the medical, welfare etc….we continually bend over and let them do it! Politicans are in EVERY POCKET possible staring “at the top” and all the way down. Here in CALIF we’re paying the entire ticket, I for one and sick of it-one way or the other, we will continue to be screwed!! Wake up Washington, I don’t see any of the COngress, Reps, Senators giving back anything especially Medical – LIFETIME and unwarranted salaries with all the perks, you are all a bunch of freeloaders, Dems & Rep, Ind the whole shotin’ match!
There are many levels to debate this issue.
Let me discuss just one aspect. The President and the Congress are supposedly attempting to lower medical costs. They are telling us that the cost of this plan is $865 billion over 10 years. How does a plan designed to lower costs of any kind cost us nearly 1 trillion dollars? Does anybody with at least half a brain believe that if we spend 1 trillion it will help us save 2 trillion. Does anybody with half a brain believe that it will only cost us 1 trillion. Given the Federal Government’s track record whatever figure they tell us it will cost, triple it.
Finally, considering the shape of our economy, considering the National Debt and our huge budget deficits, what kind of idiots would want to add an additional 1 trillion to the tab?
So, Gill Fin, if your 25 year old without insurance then breaks their leg in three places sliding into second base or they find out they have diabetes or some other disease? What then? They can’t hope to pay all the costs (especially since they don’t get the 70% negotiated discounts many insured people get) and they can’t ever hope to pay for private insurance in the case of a disease.
This leaves either the taxpayer to pay or we force medical providers to provide services without getting paid, both of which seem to me to be unacceptable answers. Unless you want to let them go without medical care because they were stupid – an even worse outcome.
For health insurance to work, the healthy as well as the sick need to participate. As much as I would prefer government to stay out of it, the current system isn’t working.
And your comments ignore the single parents with kids and no employer health insurance, recently laid off workers who don’t have the money to pay for health insurance, etc, etc, etc. What is your plan for them? Or, are you like TEXAS AGENT who thinks only illegal aliens should be part of the discussion?
No Disgusted, I don’t want the government to be my Mommy and Daddy. Leave my current coverage alone and don’t try to bankrupt me and this country by increasing spending on health care without correcting the cost problems. Are you deaf? Plenty of people have made these same statements and you still make the same idiotic comments. Nobody has said illegals are the problem, just a significant part of it. What part of illegal don’t you understand?
So, in the situations I outlined earlier, what is your plan that will:
1) Correct the cost problems in the system.
2) Get the injured or sick person the care they need.
3) Provide the medical provider with a fair reimbursement for their services.
4) Permit health insurers to earn a fair profit.
5) Not cover illegal aliens.
6) Be acceptable to enough politicians that it might pass.
7) Not involve a government option.
No you aren’t listening since these have been posted over and over. You just don’t listen to anyone. I have no need to educate you. Learn to read. Learn to think. It’s a freedom we can still enjoy, for now.
That is for the twenty five year old baseball player to decide, not me. But now the government has decided that indeed, he will purchase insurance or be penalized. If he chooses to keep his $75 instead of buying a major medical policy, that should his choice. Just what exactly is liberal about forcing people to buy what they don’t want, and don’t think they need? Our nation is populated by people who either are risk takers, or descendents of risk takers. That’s our nature. Next thing I guess is you’ll require cats to bark like dogs.
Hey we in CA agree with Texas and your comments indicate a state no on the Mexican Border where the illegals drop there kids on the US side of the border for the funded school buses hall there asses to our schools free too to add to the perk of free medical treatment.
You have accurately described the challenge. I commend you. Finally a summary of the real issues. Our lawmakers have been hired to answer those questions, and hopefully, they will carefully develop a solution that helps us achieve those objectives. Your list did not include a government option, and did include tort reform, both useful in keeping down costs and encouraging health care providers to treat the symptom and stop managing to lawsuit avoidance.
Without rancor I ask – why didn’t our lawmakers compose such a succint, complete list such as your’s without villifying the health care administrators
(insurers) and spreading so much misinformation and so many lies?
Gee, after being villified all day, I don’t know what to say.
Personally, I think tort reform is critical to the long term success of any health care reform. I just don’t think it can pass congress regardless of who is in charge.
As for the government option, I would favor a residual market type of plan because the health insurers are not in a position to provide this without help.
The hard part is still what to do with those who choose not to be insured. If they subsequently need expensive health care and can’t afford it, what then? Would you let health care providers refuse care? If not, you’re simply making everyone else pay for the irresponsibility of the injured/sick person who chose to go without. The provider needs to get paid or sooner or later we don’t have health care providers. At the moment, the Republicans don’t appear to have an answer.
The statistical liklihood of twenty somethings experiencing such catastrophe is so low that I am loathe to manage to it. Again, $75 a month is not very much money for those who actually want it.
I know this much, Disgusted. When all those young people voted for Obama, they sure didn’t expect that one short year later he would be penalizing them for not buying something they don’t want in the first place.
Lastly, what a sad commentary. Most of us Americans agree on most things. We have enabled these elected jackasses to pit us against one another.
Hey disgusted, the republicans aren’t digging into your pockets stealing your money to finance a system we all know is doomed to fail!!! Look at the Medicare, Medical and SSN systems they mismanage….
While I think you underestimate that part of the problem, I know I don’t have any valid statistical evidence to contridict you.
I question how health insurance can work if people can wait until they are sick or hurt to enroll. A classic moral hazard. You can’t ask the health insurers to just accept that. So, sooner or later these people will get sick or hurt or at least feel it’s more likely at their advanced age (morale hazard – not much better). What then?
I’m not hearing any real discussion on these issues.
To heck with it all.
Let’s just go single payor!
Health Insurance is not insurance anyway, they are just middlemen who take 30% out of the health care system, without providing a service of any sort. When was the last time a Health Insurance Company performed open heart surgery? check up? etc.
Medicare for all, just add it to my tax bill, then I’ll find deductions on my schedule C, and write it off!
Please provide any information that proves health insurers enjoy more that a one or two percent profit. Part of the problem is that proponents of government insurance continue to lie that health insurers make a 15 percent, 20 percent and now 30 percent profit. Furthermore, insurers are required to keep between 30 and 50 percent reserves so they DON’T RUN OUT OF MONEY AND SUBSEQUENTLY ARE UNABLE TO PAY CLAIMS, a burden not endured by state or federal insurers (medicaid and medicare). A more relevant question is ‘what is the expense ratio of government insureds compared to private insureds?’ Another relevant question – how do the contracts differ between government plans and private plans (that means what procedures and maladies are covered by one or the other comparetively, for our attorney friends). You do know, it hope, that Medicaid and Medicare deny claims too, based on the CONTRACT. I know those questions and answers are far too sophisticated for the government option drones, but give it a try anyway. It will be fun!
WAIT! Seems no one has looked at the TAX IMPACT to every single wage earner in America. The Baucus Plan radically changes IRS rules that favor large tax increases everywhere by removing what were once allowable tax write offs and then adding a new level of taxation to your already taxable income. This includes everyone below as well as above $250,000 in annual income. PAY ATTENTION TO THE IRS CHANGES PROPOSED – THIS IS A HUGE NEW BURDON ON ALL TAX PAYERS!
The only way to save the insurance industry and our country is to allow for rate regulation and Federal oversight of how premium collected dollars are invested. Get rid of the State Charters, set insurer’s up as non profit organizations and make them tax exempt. All profits after expenses, go to rerserve and secured only in fixed and insured accounts.
They must offer coverage to everyone, cover all medical illnesses that are treatable and approved jointly by a medical board of doctors, specialist, surgeons and pharmacist.
The rate cap will be approved and implemented by the federal gov’t, but negotiated between the pharmacist, hospitals, doctors with federal oversight, which will not allow overcharging or profit mongering.
Don’t force anyone to buy health insurance but offer a lower rate if they buy young. Just like medicare they will pay a penalty for waiting and signing up late.
You’ll discover that if the insurance is affordable over 90% if not more of the folks who are working, with and without families will sign up for this plan.
Offer tax credits to employers that offer incentives for the employees to sign up for a group health plan or if they purchase an individual plan.
If this regulation puts some insurers out of business so be it. The Federal Gov’t should mandate that they merge with a larger insurer and provide free legal assistance to do so.
We don’t need a Gov’t option but we must insist on Fed regulation of a commercial industry – THE ONLY INDUSTRY THAT IS LEFT UNREGULATED BY THE FEDS>
Remember BLACK SUNDAY?
Pretend the health insurance industry is a mountain of thick, black muck, on the verge of the world’s biggest land slide.
it doesn’t matter what plan Democrats put forth, you won’t be in favor of it anyway. You’ve already made your decision in your mind.
That’s the problem that both Republicans and Democrats in Washington have had for some time now, and not just pertaining to health care. The Democrats could give the Republicans everything they want in a bill, and they’d still vote against it, because they don’t believe in compromise.
What does Big Turtle say that makes you think he is a Republican? Are you responding to his idea or to all of the post in general?
Republican’s in general respresent the insurance lobbyist, whom work for the many different insurance companies and insurance associations. Right? I doubt if Big Turtle sparked any support from those lobbyist.
Three worthy points of the article.
1. It does not list that insurance premiums in the Baucus plan will cap at 13% of gross income for those within 400% above the poverty level. I missed the cap for those making over 400% of the poverty level.
2. When will they reform casualty and property insurance???
3. It costs this much without the govt, oh yeah, public option.
Coop = Public Option
The converse to the people currently without health care is that almost 85% are covered. If the pols would put emphasis on cost containment and tort reform this number would certainly increase, wouldn’t it? I don’t understand why overhaul is the way the debate is headed.
Pat you are right on the money.
AS SOON AS THIS “PLAN” IS TO BE VOTED ON, SOME DUMB LIBERAL DEMO WILL AMEND THE BILL AND ADD “PUBLIC OPTION” AND “INSURE ILLEGAL ALIENS”.
LET’S SLOW DOWN AND TAKE IT ONE STEP AT A TIIME. THE REASON MEDICARE AND MEDICAID ARE BROKE IS DUE TO “ILLEGAL ALIENS” GETTING THIS COVERAGE WITH NO $$ PAID INTO THE SYSTEM! ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS CROSS THE BORDER AND HAVE A CHILD IN THE US AND “WHAM” YOU CAN HAVE WELFARE, FREE MEDICAL, FREE DENTAL, FREE EDUCATION, FREE
EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!
Remember open rating for Workers Compensation in 1995? Rates were dramatically reduced when true competition was unleashed. Insurance producers had to hustle to retain and write new business then, now it’s the Health Insurance Industries turn to feel the wrath?
so they are going to start charging the insurance company’s $6 Billion in fees starting in 2010, who the hell do they think is going to foot that bill????
A bit about these 6:
“the six senators have raised $10.7 million since 1989 from the industries and people with the most at stake financially in the overhaul effort. That’s an average of nearly $1.8 million apiece over that period, more than triple the roughly $560,000 average for all other senators and representatives.
The figures are based on data compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which studies political spending, and actually understate health-related contributions. The center’s researchers include only some campaign donations from health insurers in the health category because they lump many health insurers’ donations into a separate category for insurance, real estate and financial firms.”
–Associated Press
So how in practice does this public option differ from auto and work comp residual market plans where people and businesses not eligible for coverage in the standard market have a way to get required coverage. Losses are then shared amongst all shareholders through assessments against insurers which are immediately passed along as higher premiums.
If you don’t have some sort of public option, where do sick people find affordable insurance after they get laid off, graduate from college and come off their parents policy before getting a job, etc. etc. etc.
We need a system where it is reasonably possible for everyone to obtain insurance. Perhaps it’s only major medical or trauma care, but being sick should not automatically destroy a person financially.
Almost everything I read in these comments involves the writers personal bank account and how it might be threatened. I know it’s expensive people, but buy a heart, would ya!
Congress and Obama should read “The New Health Insurance Solution” by Paul Zane Pilzer – dated but still relevant. There are State options for people who can’t get health insurance and if they are too poor to afford it they get Medicaid. What am I not getting about there being health care crises? It’s a medical cost containment crises that will either accelerated or cause the quality of care to decrease when competition is eliminated.
we are too busy paying for the illegals here is CA to take on others would create more burden on our finances and we aren’t AIG.
RIGHT ON!!! WE IN TEXAS ARE PAYING FOR ILLEGALS NOW–SO, WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE!!!!
The reason the debate is about overhaul rather than true reform is that the Obama administration doesn’t simply want to fix various parts of the current system….they want a single payer system!! Obama is on record stating he favors a single payer system! So you can bet that buried somewhere in the thousands of pages of the various health care bills, the seeds are planted toward eventually having a single payer system. They are very skillful at spinning this whole issue to make it sound like what we want to hear. But mark my words, they will eventually get the single payer system they so desperately want. Then we’re all screwed.
I hear Washington talk “Health Care Reform” then beat the insurance industry. The doctors and hospitals are the health care industry. As long as a doctor can charge $200 for an office visit and the lab drawing blood charges over $1,000 and Washington does not address this, where is the reform?
So now if an individual chooses NOT to buy health insurance, he pays a penalty?
About 15 million of the uninsured are twenty somethings who could afford $75 a month for a Hospital/Surgical major medical policy, and choose not to. So now the government will penalize them if they don’t pay up. Make no mistake, health care reform for that group is not about covering uninsureds. Its about making them pay for something they don’t want, and don’t need. Oh, and without their money, the whole thing doesn’t fly.
Welcome to change, democrat style.
I agree why the heck do we have to support those that come here just for the medical, welfare etc….we continually bend over and let them do it! Politicans are in EVERY POCKET possible staring “at the top” and all the way down. Here in CALIF we’re paying the entire ticket, I for one and sick of it-one way or the other, we will continue to be screwed!! Wake up Washington, I don’t see any of the COngress, Reps, Senators giving back anything especially Medical – LIFETIME and unwarranted salaries with all the perks, you are all a bunch of freeloaders, Dems & Rep, Ind the whole shotin’ match!
There are many levels to debate this issue.
Let me discuss just one aspect. The President and the Congress are supposedly attempting to lower medical costs. They are telling us that the cost of this plan is $865 billion over 10 years. How does a plan designed to lower costs of any kind cost us nearly 1 trillion dollars? Does anybody with at least half a brain believe that if we spend 1 trillion it will help us save 2 trillion. Does anybody with half a brain believe that it will only cost us 1 trillion. Given the Federal Government’s track record whatever figure they tell us it will cost, triple it.
Finally, considering the shape of our economy, considering the National Debt and our huge budget deficits, what kind of idiots would want to add an additional 1 trillion to the tab?
So, Gill Fin, if your 25 year old without insurance then breaks their leg in three places sliding into second base or they find out they have diabetes or some other disease? What then? They can’t hope to pay all the costs (especially since they don’t get the 70% negotiated discounts many insured people get) and they can’t ever hope to pay for private insurance in the case of a disease.
This leaves either the taxpayer to pay or we force medical providers to provide services without getting paid, both of which seem to me to be unacceptable answers. Unless you want to let them go without medical care because they were stupid – an even worse outcome.
For health insurance to work, the healthy as well as the sick need to participate. As much as I would prefer government to stay out of it, the current system isn’t working.
And your comments ignore the single parents with kids and no employer health insurance, recently laid off workers who don’t have the money to pay for health insurance, etc, etc, etc. What is your plan for them? Or, are you like TEXAS AGENT who thinks only illegal aliens should be part of the discussion?
No Disgusted, I don’t want the government to be my Mommy and Daddy. Leave my current coverage alone and don’t try to bankrupt me and this country by increasing spending on health care without correcting the cost problems. Are you deaf? Plenty of people have made these same statements and you still make the same idiotic comments. Nobody has said illegals are the problem, just a significant part of it. What part of illegal don’t you understand?
So, in the situations I outlined earlier, what is your plan that will:
1) Correct the cost problems in the system.
2) Get the injured or sick person the care they need.
3) Provide the medical provider with a fair reimbursement for their services.
4) Permit health insurers to earn a fair profit.
5) Not cover illegal aliens.
6) Be acceptable to enough politicians that it might pass.
7) Not involve a government option.
Please, I am all ears.
No you aren’t listening since these have been posted over and over. You just don’t listen to anyone. I have no need to educate you. Learn to read. Learn to think. It’s a freedom we can still enjoy, for now.
That is for the twenty five year old baseball player to decide, not me. But now the government has decided that indeed, he will purchase insurance or be penalized. If he chooses to keep his $75 instead of buying a major medical policy, that should his choice. Just what exactly is liberal about forcing people to buy what they don’t want, and don’t think they need? Our nation is populated by people who either are risk takers, or descendents of risk takers. That’s our nature. Next thing I guess is you’ll require cats to bark like dogs.
Change we can believe in. BELIEVE IT!
Hey we in CA agree with Texas and your comments indicate a state no on the Mexican Border where the illegals drop there kids on the US side of the border for the funded school buses hall there asses to our schools free too to add to the perk of free medical treatment.
You have accurately described the challenge. I commend you. Finally a summary of the real issues. Our lawmakers have been hired to answer those questions, and hopefully, they will carefully develop a solution that helps us achieve those objectives. Your list did not include a government option, and did include tort reform, both useful in keeping down costs and encouraging health care providers to treat the symptom and stop managing to lawsuit avoidance.
Without rancor I ask – why didn’t our lawmakers compose such a succint, complete list such as your’s without villifying the health care administrators
(insurers) and spreading so much misinformation and so many lies?
Gill Fin:
Gee, after being villified all day, I don’t know what to say.
Personally, I think tort reform is critical to the long term success of any health care reform. I just don’t think it can pass congress regardless of who is in charge.
As for the government option, I would favor a residual market type of plan because the health insurers are not in a position to provide this without help.
The hard part is still what to do with those who choose not to be insured. If they subsequently need expensive health care and can’t afford it, what then? Would you let health care providers refuse care? If not, you’re simply making everyone else pay for the irresponsibility of the injured/sick person who chose to go without. The provider needs to get paid or sooner or later we don’t have health care providers. At the moment, the Republicans don’t appear to have an answer.
The statistical liklihood of twenty somethings experiencing such catastrophe is so low that I am loathe to manage to it. Again, $75 a month is not very much money for those who actually want it.
I know this much, Disgusted. When all those young people voted for Obama, they sure didn’t expect that one short year later he would be penalizing them for not buying something they don’t want in the first place.
Lastly, what a sad commentary. Most of us Americans agree on most things. We have enabled these elected jackasses to pit us against one another.
Divided we fall.
Hey disgusted, the republicans aren’t digging into your pockets stealing your money to finance a system we all know is doomed to fail!!! Look at the Medicare, Medical and SSN systems they mismanage….
While I think you underestimate that part of the problem, I know I don’t have any valid statistical evidence to contridict you.
I question how health insurance can work if people can wait until they are sick or hurt to enroll. A classic moral hazard. You can’t ask the health insurers to just accept that. So, sooner or later these people will get sick or hurt or at least feel it’s more likely at their advanced age (morale hazard – not much better). What then?
I’m not hearing any real discussion on these issues.
And I agree – divided we fall.
To heck with it all.
Let’s just go single payor!
Health Insurance is not insurance anyway, they are just middlemen who take 30% out of the health care system, without providing a service of any sort. When was the last time a Health Insurance Company performed open heart surgery? check up? etc.
Medicare for all, just add it to my tax bill, then I’ll find deductions on my schedule C, and write it off!
Please provide any information that proves health insurers enjoy more that a one or two percent profit. Part of the problem is that proponents of government insurance continue to lie that health insurers make a 15 percent, 20 percent and now 30 percent profit. Furthermore, insurers are required to keep between 30 and 50 percent reserves so they DON’T RUN OUT OF MONEY AND SUBSEQUENTLY ARE UNABLE TO PAY CLAIMS, a burden not endured by state or federal insurers (medicaid and medicare). A more relevant question is ‘what is the expense ratio of government insureds compared to private insureds?’ Another relevant question – how do the contracts differ between government plans and private plans (that means what procedures and maladies are covered by one or the other comparetively, for our attorney friends). You do know, it hope, that Medicaid and Medicare deny claims too, based on the CONTRACT. I know those questions and answers are far too sophisticated for the government option drones, but give it a try anyway. It will be fun!
WAIT! Seems no one has looked at the TAX IMPACT to every single wage earner in America. The Baucus Plan radically changes IRS rules that favor large tax increases everywhere by removing what were once allowable tax write offs and then adding a new level of taxation to your already taxable income. This includes everyone below as well as above $250,000 in annual income. PAY ATTENTION TO THE IRS CHANGES PROPOSED – THIS IS A HUGE NEW BURDON ON ALL TAX PAYERS!
Great job PointMan!!!!!! end of discussion the dems are turning the screws and pointing at republicans
The only way to save the insurance industry and our country is to allow for rate regulation and Federal oversight of how premium collected dollars are invested. Get rid of the State Charters, set insurer’s up as non profit organizations and make them tax exempt. All profits after expenses, go to rerserve and secured only in fixed and insured accounts.
They must offer coverage to everyone, cover all medical illnesses that are treatable and approved jointly by a medical board of doctors, specialist, surgeons and pharmacist.
The rate cap will be approved and implemented by the federal gov’t, but negotiated between the pharmacist, hospitals, doctors with federal oversight, which will not allow overcharging or profit mongering.
Don’t force anyone to buy health insurance but offer a lower rate if they buy young. Just like medicare they will pay a penalty for waiting and signing up late.
You’ll discover that if the insurance is affordable over 90% if not more of the folks who are working, with and without families will sign up for this plan.
Offer tax credits to employers that offer incentives for the employees to sign up for a group health plan or if they purchase an individual plan.
If this regulation puts some insurers out of business so be it. The Federal Gov’t should mandate that they merge with a larger insurer and provide free legal assistance to do so.
We don’t need a Gov’t option but we must insist on Fed regulation of a commercial industry – THE ONLY INDUSTRY THAT IS LEFT UNREGULATED BY THE FEDS>
Remember BLACK SUNDAY?
Pretend the health insurance industry is a mountain of thick, black muck, on the verge of the world’s biggest land slide.
it doesn’t matter what plan Democrats put forth, you won’t be in favor of it anyway. You’ve already made your decision in your mind.
That’s the problem that both Republicans and Democrats in Washington have had for some time now, and not just pertaining to health care. The Democrats could give the Republicans everything they want in a bill, and they’d still vote against it, because they don’t believe in compromise.
What does Big Turtle say that makes you think he is a Republican? Are you responding to his idea or to all of the post in general?
Republican’s in general respresent the insurance lobbyist, whom work for the many different insurance companies and insurance associations. Right? I doubt if Big Turtle sparked any support from those lobbyist.