We are doomed

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The CEO of the company doesn't owe your father anything. His job is to increase profits of the company for the owners of the company (the shareholders). Keeping customers like your father that raise rates will force other customers to leave for cheaper plans and lower profits. It's simple economics.

Actually, he does. My father paid his insurance premiums every month on time for 30 years. He paid to be covered in the event of an illness. The insurance company failed to follow through on its end of the bargain.

Starting today the law is on my father's side. From now on, it will be illegal for them to cancel policies of people who get sick, it will be illegal to dump customers by raising rates by crazy percentages, and it will be illegal for employers with more than 50 employees to not offer health insurance to their employees. It will also be illegal to decline someone based on a preexisting condition. So, at the end of the day, we come out on top and the unethical CEO is on the wrong side of the law.

Yes, you are absolutely right. The John Galt Mini-Me poster above failed to take into account that insurance is a legally binding contract. Uh oh!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well I have worked 28 years of my life, made a good salary for the past 20 years..have a MA degree and close to finishing a PhD. Still my insurance is $1500.00 per month for a family of three. This is too much money. Wanting a better rate doesn't imply that I am lazy. I simply want to have less expensive health care.

Here is hoping you get your wish. However, economics is not working in your favor. When the "no preexisting conditions" provisions go in to play in a few months, insurance rates overall will have to go up to offset the additional expenses of a few. There will not be the "universal mandate" for another 4 years, so in the short term higher rates are a logical consequence.

[Anonymous]

There are going to be growing pains, no doubt. There always is when you try to achieve something worthwhile.

[Anonymous]

OP here again. Healthcare is not a right. Sorry but that's a fact. Healthcare paid for by a select few deemed to be "rich" is certainly immoral.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here again. Healthcare is not a right. Sorry but that's a fact. Healthcare paid for by a select few deemed to be "rich" is certainly immoral.

No, healthcare reserved for a select few deemed to be "rich" is certainly immoral.

[Anonymous]

11:27 here, OP, how much are you really going to lose under the new plan? Have you calculated it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/polit...ll-means-for-you/?hpid=topnews

And I am wondering, if healthcare is NOT a right: What IS a right? Are we limited to just life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Are unlocked fire escapes at your workplace a "right"? Is food or water a "right"? I have to pay for them so they are a commodity, but not a right. If "Life" is a right, do I have a right to the things that keep me alive, again like food and water? Or medicine? If people have a right to "Liberty and Happiness' do they have a right to gay marriage? Why not?

Look I pay a whole lot in taxes and I look around and see: I live like a Queen. I can't really get myself worked up to resent the indigent for benefiting from my taxes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:11:27 here, OP, how much are you really going to lose under the new plan? Have you calculated it:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/polit...ll-means-for-you/?hpid=topnews

And I am wondering, if healthcare is NOT a right: What IS a right? Are we limited to just life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Are unlocked fire escapes at your workplace a "right"? Is food or water a "right"? I have to pay for them so they are a commodity, but not a right. If "Life" is a right, do I have a right to the things that keep me alive, again like food and water? Or medicine? If people have a right to "Liberty and Happiness' do they have a right to gay marriage? Why not?

Look I pay a whole lot in taxes and I look around and see: I live like a Queen. I can't really get myself worked up to resent the indigent for benefiting from my taxes.

I totally agree.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The CEO of the company doesn't owe your father anything. His job is to increase profits of the company for the owners of the company (the shareholders). Keeping customers like your father that raise rates will force other customers to leave for cheaper plans and lower profits. It's simple economics.

It is simple economics. But we have regulations--including regulations under the new healthcare bill--that protect our nation against the excesses of the market. In the process, I'd argue, the government strengthens not only society, but capitalism itself.

A system where a pre-existing condition prevents someone being able to buy insurance severely undermines entrepeneurship. Take the story of the PP, whose father ran a small business and then lost his insurance coverage. Now he's forced to choose between continuing to grow his business or being able to have healthcare. My brother-in-law is in a similar position: he started one business (which he then sold) and could be poised to start another--but he has three children diagnosed with autism, and until now he's had to work for someone else so that they're guaranteed care. Who knows what good he'll be able to accomplish now, how many jobs he'll be able to create? This story is true for thousands of people all over this country. Some (most) of these small businesses will fail. But a few will grow and thrive, providing jobs to millions, to say nothing of goods/services that this nation wants to consume.

[Anonymous]

To those who speak of the simple economics of insurance, I would say that you are viewing it in the context of the insurance companies making sensible bets on our health. In other words you are looking at insurance as gambling.

The other way to look at it is that the insurance companies are implementing a social policy of shared risk. That they can make a profit at it is their compensation for making this contribution, rather than the purpose of the system.

Although I am not a religious person, I much prefer the second view. It seems to me so much more in tune with the teachings of Christ that I cannot understand why it is not embraced by the religious right.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To those who speak of the simple economics of insurance, I would say that you are viewing it in the context of the insurance companies making sensible bets on our health. In other words you are looking at insurance as gambling.

The other way to look at it is that the insurance companies are implementing a social policy of shared risk. That they can make a profit at it is their compensation for making this contribution, rather than the purpose of the system.

Although I am not a religious person, I much prefer the second view. It seems to me so much more in tune with the teachings of Christ that I cannot understand why it is not embraced by the religious right.

The larger the risk pool, the more predictible the utilization patterns become. It's a win-win.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To those who speak of the simple economics of insurance, I would say that you are viewing it in the context of the insurance companies making sensible bets on our health. In other words you are looking at insurance as gambling.

The other way to look at it is that the insurance companies are implementing a social policy of shared risk. That they can make a profit at it is their compensation for making this contribution, rather than the purpose of the system.

Although I am not a religious person, I much prefer the second view. It seems to me so much more in tune with the teachings of Christ that I cannot understand why it is not embraced by the religious right.

Yes. I didn't want to bring that up. But it makes me crazy that the most religious of my friends are also the most Republican/opposed to health care. They talk about "personal responsibility". Sorry but I missed the part in the bible when Jesus said we didn't have to care for our neighbors because everyone has to have their own "personal responsibility". The hypocrisy makes me sick.

Make sure every baby gets born but then, the new person is NOT MY PROBLEM. Argh.

[Anonymous]

The chart provided in the article below is fascinating, it is based on WHO stats:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/mar/22/us-healthcare-bill-rest-of-world-obama

US spends 15% of GDP on healthcare. More then any of the countries on the chart. We spend twice as much per capita then next highest number. Yet we're aligned right there with China when it comes to percentage of private funds in those expenditures. Think about it: we're highest spenders on healthcare and second to only China in how much of that money comes out from our own pockets. Talk about socialized medicine. If we don't change things fewer and fewer people will be able to afford health insurance and those who are still able to pay will be paying more and more to cover that gap, and that is unsustainable. Numbers don't lie, check it out.

[Anonymous]

Just the facts, from a non partisan website. Stop watching Fox news and find out what will REALLY happen to you.

http://wordpress.asc.upenn.edu/2010/03/a-final-weekend-of-whoppers/

[Anonymous]

I agree with OP completely.

[Anonymous]

The OP's original rant was way out of line. OP lightened up, but I worry that so many in this country really think this way--pushing wealth to people that hate america and hate education? And have 6 kids? WHAT?

Those that don't work (or as OP would put it hate america so they hate having jobs) are already getting benefits through welfare, medicaid and free ER visits. That's an entire other problem. This bill is helping out the low and middle class that can't afford health care anymore. There are millions of stories like the PP's father. I honestly have no idea what we would have done when my son needed surgery and it was, thank god, covered by my wife's plan. That was 6 figures! How do people otherwise afford health care?

I can't stand the way it was passed, but I do think it was desperately needed and will greatly help out our country in the long-term.

And like some of the PPs, I also get a kick out of the religious right being so hypocritical with health care. Don't kill the fetus--make sure government is all over that, but once it's born, you are on your own. Unless said child ends up being gay--then government is all over you again.