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[pippin]

Umm..Already been there, done that.  Maybe if you start one, you'll get it.  A manager is still just an employee.  It all changes when you sign the checks.

[djeaton]

Canadian medicare has worked for me and I pay nothing for it now that I'm 65.

What are the tax rates like in Canada, and how much go to the medicare program?  Is it going broke like ours here in the US?  

I think I'm a perfect example of what is going to happen here.  If I qualify for it, I am forced to apply for it.  If I am accepted into it, my current plan drops me and forces me to use the government one.  The government one costs less than the employer one....but only if you don't use it.  If you use it, the out-of-pocket is a lot more.  Had I still been on my old family plan, which I still have to pay for, my last three doctor's visits would have been largely unnecessary.  Even if they had been required, it would have cost me in co-pays about what my monthly premiums are for Medicare...a total of about $400 for the premiums and co-pays.  Yet with Medicare, the premiums for both Medicare and my family HMO coverage start at $400 without any visits, and just the three recent visits and prescribed meds cost an additional $900 or so once it is added all up.  I now owe about $1200 in medical bills that would have been covered under my existing family plan had I been allowed to keep it.  Yet the government plan is broke (and breaking me) while the private plan makes a profit and is seen as evil.  Yet look at where the most denials of care takes place.


It's portrayed as a cost savings because medicare premiums cost less.  The CBO numbers of the ObamaCare costs divided by the number of people it is said to cover is less than the average family insurance plan.  But it is not counting all the costs.  Premiums are not everything.  It is portrayed as being paid for with Medicare cuts, but there is no way they can cut what they pay doctors by 25% and still have doctors around to handle all these new patients.  It's just not going to happen.  If they stick around, that 25% "cut" is just going to get added to what folks like me have to pay.  I'm already paying 20%.  How is adding an additional 25% going to be a good thing?  Seniors know this.  They are not going to buy it.  But don't expect that to stop the liberal elite who think they know better.  
D.

[djeaton]

Just saw some interesting reporting spread across a couple different sites.  Seems that the number that keeps getting thrown around on this new finance committee proposal (not even a real bill yet, so it's a guess at best) is $829 Billion.  But if you read the CBO report carefully, that isn't the cost of the bill.  That is the costs "that expand health insurance coverage".  There are other costs in the proposal that are not included in that figure.  These include $11 Billion to keep from having a sharp reduction in payments to Medicare doctors (even though they say that it only costs $829 Billion because we are going to eventually cut payments for Medicare doctors by an additional 25%), it doesn't include $21 Billion in additional Medicare prescription coverage, and it doesn't include $33 Billion in unfunded mandates on the States.  When you then add in the private sector mandates (taxes on employers, insurers, medical supplies, and so forth that are just going to be passed on to the consumer), the total cost could be as high as $1.5 Trillion.  Maybe even $2 Trillion real cost if the federal plan turns out to be anything like the plan in Massachusetts where over half of the costs are paid for by private sector mandates as opposed to direct taxes.  It's all a big numbers game that doesn't even include the "public option" that four of the five other proposals have in it.  We see $829 Billion instead of $1.2 Trillion and think, "WOW!  We're saving money Big Time!"  It's a way to distract people from the realization that when you have already grown the deficit three-fold over the last few months, there is no more money for something like this even if it were "only" $829 Billion and still leave half of the uninsured here still without insurance. 

And all these numbers also don't take into account that even though our congressional lawyer turned President promised it would not cover illegals, it is going to have to.  Remember Prop 165 or whatever it was in California?  It was going to ban illegals from state funded health services.  The courts overturned it.  Texas tried to do the same thing with education.  Went all the way to the Supremes.  It was shot down.  It is unconstitutional to offer social services and discriminate based on citizenship.  Obama is the former editor of the Harvard Law Review.  He know this.  So he can get up there and say that they are not covered in his plan because he knows people don't want that...all the while knowing that they ultimately will be.  He gets his cake and eats it too.  What a joke.  But the dreamy-eyed masses just eat it up and swallow it hook, like, and sinker.  It's going to sink us all.

[roadrunner]

What is sinking us all is the present health care system, which is a joke, if it wasn't so miserably inept, overpriced, and incapable of true health care.

[djeaton]

What is sinking us all is the present health care system, which is a joke, if it wasn't so miserably inept, overpriced, and incapable of true health care.

That is little more than a bumper sticker.  The vast majority of Americans have health insurance and thinks it works well for them.  Can we do things to allow for more competition and drop prices?  Yes.  Should pre-existing conditions from those not trying to game the system be covered?  Again, yes.  But just because some people can't afford to live forever doesn't mean that we are not being sold a bill of goods on some phony price tag.  I think a nation-wide non-profit co-op is a great idea.  I don't even have a problem with illegals buying coverage from it.  Some goes for those here on temporary visas.  But we don't need to lie about the costs of it in order to sell it. 

Our problem isn't in care.  People get that.  It is in insurance coverage.  Every person should be allowed to have some source for that should they choose to purchase it.  No one should be forced to though.  I think tax credits for medical expenses would be a good idea.  Premiums could be covered under that as well.  But having insurance, like having health, is nothing that the Government should try to guarantee to anyone.  They should guarantee the opportunity to get it, but that is it.  And when they propose that freedom to purchase it or not, they need to be honest about the cost of that guarantee.   
D.

[David]

What is sinking us all is the present health care system, which is a joke, if it wasn't so miserably inept, overpriced, and incapable of true health care.

That is little more than a bumper sticker.

I love it!

BTW the world still looks to the US to lead in health care...not the other way around.

David

[Seolfor]

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

[David]

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

See we rank pretty well over all. Gotta be a bit suspicious since its the WORLD Health Organization.

David

[djeaton]

I agree with you, David.  If this were about "saving money", there is low-hanging fruit available that the Dems have voted down a number of times.  The CBO just came out with a report stating that reforms to malpractice awards and all the defensive medicine practiced because of it could save lawmakers $54 Billion.  Things like this and allowing cross-state competition would not require months and months of debate and thousand-page bills from multiple committees.  It would be done easily.  It would have to be the purpose of this endeavor though.  "CBO now estimates, on the basis of an analysis incorporating the results of recent research, that if a package of proposals ... was enacted, it would reduce total national health care spending by about 0.5 percent (about $11 billion in 2009)."  "For today's report, the CBO examined several recent proposals, including a $250,000 cap on damages for pain and suffering, a $500,000 cap on punitive damages and deadline of one year for adults and three years for children to file suit after a medical injury."

Wonder if we will have a photo op with lawyers in lawyer uniforms standing behind the president while he tries to tell us why saving $11 billion this year alone is a bad idea.    Wonder if a "lawyer uniform" would look like Obama's suit.  

As far as the WHO ranking from 2000 goes, it makes me wonder how "performance" was measured.  My guess is that infant mortality played a large part.  If so, it is an unfair comparison.  Some countries don't count babies under a certain weight or over a certain amount premature as "live births".  I recently read an article about that.  I'll have to try to find it.  It also pointed out that the countries like the US and Africa that have a large black population have higher infant mortality in that segment that no one has been able to explain.  It isn't based on income level or socio-economic standing or anything else.  If I can find the link, I'll post it.
UPDATE: Here are some links about this.  Link One.  Link Two.  Link Three.  Still looking for the article I actually read earlier.  The second link specifically talks about how other "advanced" countries don't follow the WHO definition of live birth in their reporting.  The third link actually talks about a lot more countries though.
D.

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