Wow, you’re wrong again! I don’t talk about Europe. I just laugh when you try to say that Canada’s economy is going to hell because we have UHC. (May unemployment rate update for you: Canada = 8.1%, US = 9.6%
Yes, yes, Canada’s rate was higher in the past; so what - we still have UHC, and we’re doing damn fine now.
And note that Canada also suffered a recession. So that does not explain why we’re doing so well.
Perhaps our unemployment rate is low now BECAUSE we have UHC; The high cost of health benefits is not preventing employers from hiring.
Unfortunately, not every state does. Ohio, for instance, has no high-risk state pool.
Yes, they can. My husband and I had to shop private-pay (rather than group) insurance last year. In our state, there is no high-risk pool, but there is a law that states that at least one private insurance company must offer a high-risk group to individuals like me (I’m a cancer survivor; also, I have a son with a chronic degenerative condition). This sounds pretty good, but they forgot to put a cap on premiums. When we finally got an estimate, the cost just for me and my husband, not including my son, was $2250/month, with a $7500 yearly deductible per individual. It’s not a million dollars per month, but it may as well have been. We certainly couldn’t pay it.
I find it very telling, and very sad, that the time when we were faced with losing group health insurance was more terrifying and more stressful than the months following my initial cancer diagnosis. There is something deeply wrong with our system.
You’ve clearly forgotten the fact that us Canadians are suffering under the oppressive thumb of our socialist overlords. And how we’re all incapable of thinking for ourselves after living in such a nanny state*. That will almost certainly be **Rands **next tack.
*note how Rand refers to UHC as an ‘entitlement program’, when it is actually actually just good sense as it costs much less per capita and has a higher approval rating than private healthcare. If anything, US style healthcare is supported by the tiny minority of Americans who hold the vast majority of the wealth in that country. They just want to get whatever they want the second they want it, and to hell with how that affects other people and the economy as a whole. What is more entitled than that?
Why don’t you provide the number of people who like their health insurance, but poll only those who cost more than they pay in.
I’ve personally never had a single issue with any health insurance whatsoever (I had to be forced to go to the hospital when it turned out I had a broken arm, so I’m not a terribly expensive person to the insurance companies), so I’d normally be one of those happy people. My wife happens to be one of those people whose yearly costs are probably a bit higher than what we pay in for her. She has tons of horror stories.
Without knowing the numbers up front, I’d wager that fewer than half the population whose health care costs insurers over 10K a year would be happy with their insurance.
My sister’s low credit rating and debt is caused entirely by her insurance suddently stopping paying for her stuff, or acting like their going to pay, and then leaving part of it out.
My Dad is on insurance, but it won’t pay for the amount of meds he needs. And now it’s getting harder to get it to pay at all.
My mom is pretty much uninsured. She’s technically on her insurance at work, but she pays nearly full cost for everything.
Me? I’m on Medicaid. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than any of the above.
I had to leave my job, after fighting going on disablility for 8 years, because I could no longer walk more than a few feet and was in pain 24/7. I was told I would get COBRA insurance for 18 months. The cost 759.00 a month. My disablility check 742.00 a month. When I tried to have my knee replacement approved COBRA dropped me 5 months early.
It takes 24 months after your S.S.D.I. is approved before you can get Medicare I could live with the pain 24/7 until September of 2011 before I can have the first of 2 knee surgeries. But my pacemaker that keeps my heart beating will run out around Oct. 2010. No doctor is willing to replace it without insurance.
My Cardiologist tells me that many of the best U.S. doctors are going to Canada because they know they will get paid without having to go to collections and fighting the insurance companies trying to get what they are owed.
And someone with RR’s mindset would be more than happy to tell you it’s your own damn fault for having a substandard knee and heart. Or: boo-fucking-hoo.
But what prompted me to respond is the second paragraph. I can’t speak to the issue of cross-border migrations, but I do know that the insurance muddle was what drove my father (on whom be peace) out of practice and into retirement. His health wouldn’t start to decline for another seven years, and he still had the drive to serve his patients, but he just reached the point of being mortally tired of dealing with insurance company bushwah.
You Google it; I live it. I can’t find any company that will even give my self-employed chronic-disease-suffering ass the time of day. Luckily, I had a policy pre-diagnosis, and they have yet to find a legal reason to cancel it.
That said, in many cases, the pre-existing condition is what needs to be covered. Why is it acceptable to have a policy that covers everything except the issue that is most likely to cause problems? You end up paying for insurance that covers everything except your pre-existing condition, then you pay out of pocket for the meds & supplies & doctor visits for your pre-existing condition. How many people can reasonably afford that?
If I paid out of pocket for me and my husband’s health needs, it’d be in the $1300-$1400/month range. And we are both very fit, healthy people - looking at us, you’d never guess that I have expensive health needs and he’s on a common medication that runs ~$100/month. No, there are no $4 generics that cover either of our needs.
It’s not just minor conditions that aren’t covered. And “minor conditions” aren’t always cheap (see above.)
. . . says the guy whose apparent mode of argument is to come into a thread, post a jerkish response to the OP with no content whatsoever, and then to assert that health care reform is a ‘liberal douche’ policy.
Someone here isn’t so good at argumentation, and in this case I don’t think it’s Gigo.
Since this has devolved into another of Rand Rover’s attempt at showing us how much he knows about stuff, I have a question:
How many of you would be willing to pay another $700 a month towards taxes?
Health care costs money. There is no way to get around that. So it is either going to be paid up front (through insurance, co-pays, deductibles), or it is going to be paid through taxes.
To make sure DanBlather is covered, we need to see our yearly tax load go up by $8400. What would that look like on your federal taxes? 5% 10% 20%
It might also require a national sales tax, are you willing to pay 10% more on everything you purchase?
Where are these figures coming from? They certainly don’t reflect the real cost of offering affordable health insurance to those who don’t already have it.
We’ve had this discussion before, and I’ll repeat myself.
My health care plan through my employer costs my employer and I a cumulative 10.75% of my salary.
I would happily take a federal tax hike of 12-15% in service of granting a similar policy ($2500 deductible, with HSA/FSA, $15 copay on routine stuff and no copay whatsoever on emergency, dental and vision included) to every single person in the United States.
The fact that I would bet good money that a single-payer system universally implemented would not cost more than 7% (based on every other nation’s health expenditures compared to us) and that I’d probably make money on the deal doesn’t even enter into it–if it stays 15%, that’s still just goddamn fine with me.
I got that figure from the OP. $8400 is what his insurance company assesses his health care costs at. Well, $8400 minus profit, advertising, administration, a nice new building, company cars, more administration, legal department, second legal department, more advertising to make up for what the second legal department just did…
Exactly, it has to be repeated over and over and over and over.
Too bad **Rand Rover **will never read that post, but maybe he’ll read this one, or the next one, ideally it would be nice if he read at least one of them, I’m not holding my breath.
The question isn’t whether or not I want to pay $700 a month more in taxes (realizing that we’re kind of making up numbers here).
I earn about $1500 a month. There’s no way I can afford close to $700 a month. But, that, of course, is what taxes are for; to provide government services for things beyond the scope of an individual to take care of, and that serve the interests of the country.
I’m all for taxes going up in order to pay for health care.
(of course, the real issue, IMHO, that no one dares tackle, is not ‘how do we pay for health care,’ but, ‘why is basic care so expensive in the first place, and is it worth it?’)
It doesn’t matter if the money comes out of your pocket labeled “Health Insurance Premium” or labeled “Taxes”, it still comes out of your pocket. I’m not impressed with the “increased taxes” argument. After all, it’s just a switch of labels - it doesn’t stop the money from coming out of your pocket.
In fact, if you look at the per capita health care expenses of UHC and the US’ system, you’ll find that the UHC systems run at a much lower cost and everyone gets the basic coverage they need. I am highly impressed with what I know if the systems in Canada, the UK, France and the Netherlands. In the UK, I have personal experience with the system and I thought how they handled my SO’s heart issue and his mother’s end-of-life problems were efficient and compassionate and nobody had to beg the insurance companies to pay the bills they were contracted to pay (unlike my own experience here). It was great.
BTW, I work(ed) in the health insurance industry. I understand claims processing, insurance plans, etc. I KNOW how this stuff works and I still had to “prove” that my claims deserved payment. Sheeesh.
Exactly, you are okay with everyone ELSE’S taxes going up. Switching to a tax funded system means that someone has to pay that $700 a month (or what ever the cost is).
Sadly, we’ve established more than 1 person in this thread that can’t afford it, which means someone else has to pick up the tab.
But the “tab” is not an immutable figure. I am currently in a group plan, and I pay $529 per month for no duductible, no coinsurance HMO service. Suddenly, just because I will no longer be in a group in September, my individual insurance goes up to $1325 per month. My health has not changed, so which figure accurately reflects the cost of covering me?
I am looking forward to the insurance exchanges that will kick in in 2013-14 that will put all the uninsured in a group that can bargain for more reasonable premiums. I don’t want free insurance, I just want my premiums to reflect the reality of the cost of providing services.
A percentage of your wages may or may not be $700… it is directly related to how much you get paid. So, if you only earn $1500 bucks a month, you will pay only $150 at let’s say 10% of you wages ($275 at 15%).
Now, if you earn more, it would be of cos more.
The general idea behind the tax is, that it pays that specific bill.
From the amounts of threads I’ve seen in the dope about healthinsurance disasters or cost or things going wrong, I am really wondering how people actually like this system.
Sure it is working somewhat, but not for everybody or the wast majority.
It is also a given, that any system has it’s flawes.
Even the one’s in Europe are far from being perfect, but people are not complaining about it as much, since nobody is really worried about it. Mostly due to the fact that we all have healthinsurance and wont loose everything, because the insurance is not paying up because I got diagnosed with cancer or some other shit.
The financial point is certainly is not a worry when diangosed with cancer, if the insurance is covering that, or if the insurance renews my contract.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/us/healthcare031020_poll.html
Actually the majority of Americans are unhappy with our system. Right wingers are afraid the unwashed masses, who really don’t deserve medical coverage, will get it. Worse they image it will cost them money. For most Americans ,the cost of health care is a huge problem. The quality of care sucks. We pay more and get less. Such a deal.
And that person is the one paying already health insurance.
Since it is a business: if A) and B) are not paying their bill, because they are bankrupt, I have to get my money from C) and D), which do have health insurance.
Then the government has to pay the rest, so that the hospitals don’t have to declare bankruptcy and they get funded through taxes.
So, someone is already paying that tap, without having the benefits from it.