Health Care Costs for Those of us that have it

I got my enrollment packet in the mail yesterday and was surprised at the changes and the cost increase. If I am reading this right I will be paying an extra 27 dollars a paycheck and my coverage will be decreasing in benefits some drastically high. A few of years ago my wife severely broke her ankle. The tab came to around 45,000 dollars. The HMO I have paid everything except a 250 dollar deductible. I call that great insurance. Jump ahead four years to the present day and with the same scenario I would be paying about seven thousand dollars out of pocket. This is why seventy percent of the personal bankruptcies in the United States are do to health care and and half of those are people who had insurance and could not afford the deductible or went over there maximum allowed benefits. Oh and my insurance no longer calls it a deductible, they now call it co-insurance. I guess that's to make me feel better about it. Anyways on the news tonight they showed that the average a company will pay in premiums for each employee is 9120 dollars. And that's on top of an employee contribution of 2100 dollars a year. Plus an employee will pay on top of that 1900 per year in co pays or deductibles. My question is why would business's be against a national health care? It would drastically reduce the cost to the business in order to compete in a global economy where we are the only country in the modernized world that does not have a national health care system. Those figures are for me and my wife. If we were to have children the cost goes up even more. Its time to cut out the middle man (The insurance companies) from doing nothing useful except enriching themselves on other peoples suffering.

I just want to make it clear. I am not in favor of Max Baucuses health plan or President Obamas health plan. What does it say when the Baucus health plan is not liberal enough for Olympia Snowe, a republican. She is a moderate republican, but a republican none the less. Even she won't sign on because there are not enough subsidies for poor people. Maybe it says he (Baucus) has received over three million dollars from the health insurance and pharmaceutical lobby. Why do you think they are backing his bill? The only way to go is a single payer health plan. Medicare for everyone. Right now medicare (the health insurance you get when you reach 65 years old, ran by the government) only has high cost patients enrolled in it and that's why its going broke. On the other hand the health insurance industry has seen record profits year after year with our out of pocket costs skyrocketing. Its no wonder, if medicare picks and chooses to only insure healthy people the way the for profit insurance companies do, they would not be in the financial trouble their in. They would be making a profit themselves. The cost for insurance companies to review claims so they can deny them, along with looking for any little discrepancy so they can drop you when you find out you need them for a catastrophic illness is over 350 billion dollars a year. That money could pay for everyone in this country to have health insurance at no additional cost to the taxpayer. This is not socialized health care. The V.A. is socialized health care. The government employees the doctors and nurses and owns the hospitals. A single payer plan would not. The profit should go to health care workers not the insurance industry. A single payer system is medicare for everyone. You go to whichever doctor you choose. This is the only solution to solve three very important problems. 1. It eliminates the possibility of medicare going broke, because now they are taking in money from healthy young people who on average use very little of the benefits as well as older people, many of which need constant medical care. 2. The overhead that is now spent on administrative costs would pay for the program. Estimates say that it would cost around two hundred dollars a month for a family of four. That money can be given to you by your employer to pay for it. This eliminates the higher costs your employer pays to private for profit health insurance companies. 3. It allows companies a lower cost structure to compete on an even playing field in a global economy. But noooo, congress and the President will have none of that. They just want to feed us a bill that will cost the taxpayers a ton of money, ensure the insurance companies continue with record profits, and keep many people uninsured. Once again the democrats are wimping out. You could give the republicans everything they want and they still won't sign on when it comes to a vote. They know they are feeding the democrats shit and when it fails they can say "See we told you it wasn't going to work" and blame the democrats for a crappy bill that they were against. Democrats in D.C. must wake up and grow a set for a change.

A couple of interesting items I came across today. It seems President Bush was not to keen on Sarah Palin himself. A new book coming out that was written by former Bush speech writer Matt Latimer claims that Bush said McCain's choice was dubious at best and that "This woman is being put into a position she is not even remotely prepared for. She hasn't spent one day on the national level. Let's wait and see how she looks five days out." I am not sure this is true as I always wondered if Bush even new what the word dubious meant or even pronounce it. Am I bashing Bush? In the words of Sarah Palin, you betcha! Five days out she had been exposed to the public through the media showing how simple she was and frankly she sounded like a total idiot. The comedians were having a field day with her. It is ironic though that even Bush could see that she was not ready for what she was put into. All you republicans take note of what your fearless leader has said. In the second thing I came across was about Joe (You Lie) Wilson of South Carolina. The day after his outburst at Obama's address to congress in his press conference he stated that he was for legal immigration and stated he was an immigration attorney. The problem with that is there is no record of him working on any immigration case or any record of an immigration case with his real name Addison Wilson. Joe Wilson I have just one thing to say to you. You lie!

09/12 March on Washington D.C. - What a JOKE!

I came across a few pictures of Saturdays march in Washington D.C. By the republicans, teabaggers, birthers, and deathers. Now I know that my republican friends are not like this but for me it's embarrassing that I was ever affiliated with this party. As the pictures show this is nothing but a bunch of sore losers (Get over it Obama won) showing subdued racism and I just can't believe that in 2009 this is what our countries become. And to the birthers who now have come up with a second Obama birth certificate, you keep forgetting the most important thing, Kenya was not a country in 1961 the year Obama was born so stop making Kenyan birth certificates.

You lie. That's what Republican Representative Joe Wilson from South Carolina yelled at President Obama on Wednesday nights address to congress. You lie. It seems to me when G.W. Bush spoke to congress the democrats did not show that kind of disrespect. Yeah when he showed up there were some boos but once his speeches to the joint session of congress started the democrats remained quiet. You lie, is what the democrats could have said but they didn't. What I would like to know is where was Joe Wilson the last eight years before Obama took office? Because if there was ever a need to shout you lie, it was during the Bush presidency. For example Bush lied to the country about Iraq being tied to Al Qaeda, he lied about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and he lied about Iraq's mobile weapons labs. And because of these lies, over four thousand US soldiers have given their lives in Iraq. Where was Joe Wilson then. The real issue is, he shouted you lie about the health care issue. Specifically the issue of insuring illegal aliens. HR3200 S246 (Health care reform bill) specifically states that there will be no federal payment for undocumented aliens. A fact that even Fox News's Bill O'reilly agreed to telling Karl Rove that he was wrong along with Joe Wilson immediately following Obamas speech. If you are going to show up the president in front of the world, at least have your facts straight. I have mine straight and it's no wonder that with people as stupid as Joe Wilson shaping this countries future that the average American stands up and and shouts "I want government out of my medicare" at town hall meetings. People, don't take my word or Fox News's word or MSNBC's word. Get off your ass and do a little research. It would surprise you how much a little bit of knowledge stimulates your brain.

CNN's Sanchez responds to if Reagan had done it argument by pointing out that "Reagan did address children"

CNN's Sanchez responds to if Reagan had done it argument by pointing out that "Reagan did address children"

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Wow, now the talk is of Barack Obama talking to students the first day of class on the importance of getting an education and doing good in school. The republicans in charge are totally against this. Is it because they don't want the people this country educated, because if we are educated maybe we will be able to see the shit they have been selling for years now. Remember during the election educated people were called elitists by people who say they have foreign policy experience because they can see Russia. But that's right I can treat car crash victims and gunshot wounds because I watched the first four seasons of E.R. Oh wait, that's not it because people like John Boehner and Eric Cantor who frequently quote Ronald Reagan, who himself gave a speech in 1988 to students for the same thing. The importance of getting a good education. Oh and then he went of to answer a question by promoting his tax cuts. Hardly a non partisan issue. Let's reverse this and see what would happen if Obama were to include a suggestion of taxing rich people to pay for health care. I guarantee you a massive outcry by conservatives then. By the way watch the video of CNNs Rick Sanchez interviewing another uninformed citizen on Ronald Reagans School speech posted below on blog main page. Oh and lets talk about rich people, specifically the bank CEOs. After we the public bailed out their incompetence at being CEOs, to the tune of 283 billion dollars, the average salary for the twenty largest banks CEOs for 2008 was almost 13.8 million dollars each, while the average person who bailed them out was around 31,500 dollars. And yes its the usual suspects Citi, B of A, JP Morgan, AIG, Wells Fargo. By the way when questioned, the bank CEOs complained that they took a pay cut. Talk about irony!

Healthcare 2
Well who is going to pay for healthcare is the question. I will tell you who, we are. We allready are. Some of your own health care insurance pays for the uninsured who walk into an emergency room, as does some of your homeowners insurance, as does some of your auto insurance. And how many of you fork over three to five dollars a day for Starbucks where around twenty percent of that pays for Starbucks employees health care. I haven't even mentioned the half a billion dollars that the health care insurance industry has spent lobbying congress not to pass health care reform. That could insure a lot of uninsured people. Why is it that we spend twice the amount per person on health care than every other westernized country yet were thirty seventh in general health and fiftieth in life expectancy? Maybe because around one dollar out of every seven hundred dollars spent on health care in this country goes to the compenstion package for United Health Cares C.E.O. Is that what were all about now, getting rich off of other peoples sickness by denying them treatment. Make no mistake health care is a right. It is not a privelage and anyone who does not see it that way ought to take a look at themselves and ask if it is a right if god forbid your house was burning down that the fire department come and save your house, or if burgalars were breaking in that the police come to protect you. Those are rights, you have as a citizen not priveledges to only the the people who can afford them. Don't look now but the police and fire departments ar socialist programs, as are libraries, and primary public schools. They are non profit and work well in most instances. The problem is over my lifetime the government and the media has led us to believe that socialism and communism are one and the same and they're not. I would prefer the government stay out of everything except protecting our national security but thats not going to happen because of who is in charge, be it democrats or republicans and if they made government smaller they would be cutting off their own heads. So lets do this right. There are just some things that should not be profited on and peoples misery when they're sick should not be turning C.E.O.s into billionaires.

Health Care

All this talk about health care, either for or against.
But it is ironic the morons at the town halls shouting at congressmen/women I want government out of my medicare. Who do you think provides medicare? Or the female at Congressman Barney Franks town hall asking him how he can support President Obama's Nazi policies. Let's consider how ironic it is for someone to ask a gay Jew how he can support a black presidents Nazi policies. If you don't see the irony here maybe you didn't pay attention in seventh grade history or maybe you just didn't get past seventh grade. Either way you need to pay attention and educate yourself on the issues.