Blogspot: Health care
WHY NOT SINGLE-PAYER HEALTH INSURANCE FOR ALL?
Just managing our current health insurance system requires 30% of revenue. As I understand it, Medicare operates with a very small overhead (on the order of 5%). Why can't we have a single-payer government health care system and spend that 25% savings to provide for everyone?
HEALTH INSURANCE
I am a 60 year old widow. My health insurance went up 49% at work. My boss pays $300.00 of my insurance, that leaves me to pay the rest. After my insurance and withholding, Social Security, Medicare is withheld, my take home pay is $270.00 for 2 weeks. I can't even pay my utilities with that amount. I can receive no help because my gross pay is too much. Of course the don't count $900.00 plus deductions that are taken out of my gross pay. You can't own anything to get medicae help. It is not fair to the older people. There is a guy at work that is in his twenties with the same coverage that I have and his health insurance is less than $200.00. It is not fair. Yuong people get just as sick, have the same ilnesses as older people. If you have any kind of a medical condition at all they jump you up to a high risk even though you may never have a problem with it if you take a preventive medicine. I have been really careful to budget my money and try to keep out of debt and yet it is my health insurance that is going to break me. That is not fair!!!!!! Please do somethung for people like me that are working and their health insurance takes almoat all of their pay check. We need your help!!!!!! BJG
INSURED AND YET...
Being uninsured is definitely a huge problem, but having insurance doesn't always help as much as one would hope. My family has what you might call "good" insurance--decent coverage for a "reasonable" premium each month. The problem is, getting the insurance company to pay their share is like pulling teeth. My daughter has a medical condition that requires yearly tests and specialist visits--all supposedly covered by our insurance. Yet every year, we have to fill out tons of forms, write several appeal letters, call and complain to some higher-up in the insurance company, and then maybe--just maybe-- they'll cough up their share of the bill. Of course, it's six or seven months after the fact, and the medical bills have already started accumulating interest. We switched to another insurance company, thinking it would solve the problems... but lo and behold, the new plan was owned by the same parent company. Hmm. Increased competition would be a very good thing.
~Elisia
"IF THE LAWYERS CAN'T GET 30%, THEY WON'T BE AS INTERESTED" = REPLY
Twila's idea about limiting lawsuits to improve health care is at least somewhat flawed, especially as applied to the state of Nebraska. Recovery in Nebraska is already limited. Plaintiffs cannot recover punitive damages in this state, and this decreases health care costs at least to some extent. Perhaps other states should follow suit and eliminate punitive damages.
In addition, it would not be just to place severe limitations on the amount a plaintiff can recover in a lawsuit related to a bodily injury. When a plaintiff wins a lawsuit where he has received a bodily injury, the goal of awarding the (non-punitive) damages is to make the plaintiff whole -- this means to restore the plaintiff to the position he was in before the accident. If you limit the damages to a great extent, then there would be no justice. If you want to blame someone for damages being too high, blame the jurors. (And ironically, these jurors are also suffering from the effects high health care costs).
Finally, if there is little monetary incentive for attorneys to be involved in lawsuits involving healthcare, injured individuals will be cheated. If attorneys have no or little financial incentive to represent clients, they will not represent them. The system in practice where the attorney agrees to receive a certain percentage of the award in exchange for his representation, gives attorneys an incentive to represent injured clients. If this sort of system were dismantled, many injured plaintiffs would not be able to pay an attorney an hourly rate and would be left out in the cold with no representation. Without representation, these plaintiffs would have little chance of recovering much, if any, money, and would be stuck with piles of medical bills that they could not pay.
SAVING HEALTH CARE
I agree the cost of health insurance is way too high, but I have some additional reasons why. 1. Patients all expect full care without thinking how they will pay for it. Debt management companines encourage them to forego medical payments and pay their cable bill first. 2. They need to take responsibility for their own health. It's not the doctors fault if you have high blood pressure, diabetes, weigh 300 pounds and won't exercise. There arent' enough pills in the world for that. 3. Pay for preventive care instead of catastrophic care. 4. LIMIT LAWSUITS AND LAW SUIT RECOVERY. If the lawyers can't get 30%, they won't be as interested. 5. Get rid of group insurance. This limits people moving from job to job and retiring. If it was a level playing field, individual policies would decrease and more people could work the jobs they want or retire without worrying about coverage.
Twila
We have the ability to make medicine (both medical care and medications) much cheaper and still maintain efficiency. We do not need to break the backs of citizens so that a minority of stockholders and doctors make a killing. Regulate medical expenses. Regulate the price of prescription drugs. Regulate the out-of-control insurance agency. I say this knowing that it is as likely to happen as our President is to come to his senses. To do these things requires all congressmen and women to turn away from their donors. The AMA and the pharmaceutical companies poor a lot of money and lobbying into Washington to insure that we remain slaves to maintaining our health. Citizens of other first world nations pay nothing compared to what we pay. There are some things in this world that we should not give over to greed: our health is one of them.
UNDERSERVED AREA
I agree that we need competition for health care costs. But Mr. Kleeb you are running in a District that is under served. I know. My father and uncle are physicians and have been unsuccessfully trying to recruit new ones to this area to practice for 30 years. They come and then they go just as fast. The hospitals have a hard time staying open until recently when they were reimbursed at the same rate as hospitals in larger areas. What ideas do you have to create competition? The health care providers need some relief also as in days off. The patients need access because our injuries do not follow a scheduled plan. Some hospitals will not take major insurance plans and be preferred providers so Burlington Northern Employees are better off driving to Colorado. We don't have specialists available here.... and those in rural sandhills live an hour or more from a clinic or hospital. It seems to me that history is repeating itself as the populations move to the coastal areas and the economies of scale kick in again. Thank you for your thoughts.
Michelle
HUGE LEAP IN NUMBER OF UNINSURED
A study released April 26 found that the percentage of working-age Americans with moderate to middle incomes who lacked health insurance for at least part of the year rose to 41 percent in 2005, a dramatic increase from the 28 percent in 2001 without coverage.
Kleeb for Congress
MYSPACE
Is Scott Kleeb on Myspace?