Posted on 01/18/2007 7:07:02 PM PST by FairOpinion
A prominent group of 16 national organizations challenged Congress on Thursday to cut quickly through gridlock and pass legislative proposals that would provide health coverage for more than 23 million uninsured Americans.
The top proposal by the Health Coverage Coalition for the Uninsured is a five-year, $45 billion effort dubbed the "Kids First Initiative." It calls for expanding funding and eligibility for the State Children's Health Insurance Program and a new tax credit to help struggling families buy job-based child coverage.
The group also recommended that Medicaid, the joint federal and state health program for the poor, should be modified to allow states to enroll poor single adults - with the federal government footing the bill.
To help pay for job-based private health coverage, the group proposed a separate tax credit for non-poor families earning up to three times the poverty limit - a maximum of $60,000 a year for a family of four.
These and other proposals, if implemented, would eliminate more than half of the nation's 47 million uninsured Americans, while providing coverage for about 98 percent of the nation's children, supporters said.
(Excerpt) Read more at mercurynews.com ...
According to this 16% of the population is uninsured, but 47% of hte uninsured have over 200% of the poverty income level and only half are uninsured for an entire year.
At the link in my post 1 there is alink to statistics on the long term uninsured:
The Long-Term Uninsured
http://www.aspe.hhs.gov/health/long-term-uninsured04/index.htm
41% of the uninsured are 18 to 34 year old -- i.e. they are most likely uninsured by choice, figuring that the odds are in their favor. And if something happens to them, we have to pay.
The only way to eliminate this uninsured group is to make them pay for their medical expenses for the rest of their lives, deducted from their paychecks. That is the only thing that would motivate them to get insurance.
And of course, if only the sick get insurance, the rates are astronomical.
Who in FReeperdom knows what this means? If insurance is "job-based" it isn't private. I pay for private health insurance because my employer doesn't pay for it. So they are proposing a tax credit if my employer pays my insurance OR if I pay my insurance? Which is it?
And what do either of those have to do with insuring illegals and anchor babies. "Private health insurance" doesn't pay for much that isn't catasrophic. Are they, whoever they is, proposing I should help subsidize a health plan with more benefits than my private insurance that I also subsize 100%? Is there some incentive here that I shouldn't quit my high-premium insurance and get on the dole with better benfits?
Are they, whoever they is, proposing I should help subsidize a health plan with more benefits than my private insurance that I also subsize 100%? Is there some incentive here that I shouldn't quit my high-premium insurance and get on the dole with better benfits?
That's easy......yes they want you to subsidize it and they will make sure that you are not able to participate in the program that you are paying for.
How's that? When you get confused just remember.....you will ALWAYS get hosed.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Folks, I'd like to offer a heads up here. A MAJOR HEADS UP.
I suspect, strongly, that healthcare insurance funding is going to be a bigger issue in the campaign than Iraq, because Iraq will be either clearly on the road to success by then, or clearly on the road to failure by then.
The GOP needs a well defined position on this issue. We on FR are probably not well cognizant of it because many are so accustomed to having a traditional job in which healthcare is one of the benefits.
Well, people, that's not the norm. It Is Not The Norm.
The norm in the US has rapidly evolved to be people who are working in small business or are self employed and they must fund their own insurance. They are not allowed in a group plan and that drives the premiums up. Worse, much much worse, any sort of pre-existing condition will prevent people from getting insurance without winding up in some state high risk pool that will cost $15,000 / year in just premiums, and for a high deductible policy.
It is devastating and it's growing at double digit % per year.
The GOP has to have a policy to fix this. If it does not, we will lose the issue and it will be such a large issue that it could decide the election.
This sort of income redistribution has worked just really well, hasn't it? Since LBJ began the Great Society plan back in 1967, the country has spent at least 7 trillion dollars to address the ills of the downtrodden. And look at all the success.
Well, it must be behind me. Maybe over there. Perhaps in the closet. Oh, the Black family unit has been broken into smithereens? How did that happen? Single motherhood has skyrocketed? Well, why, I just don't understand.
In 1967, the population of the U.S. was probably about 250 million. Do the math, it's a significant amount of money per capita that we're all paying for no results. THEN, take the next step and consider who pays and who does not pay for these programs. The "rich" pay, i.e., those who are trying to make a living. Net, if you are a responsible person, with a job, trying to support your family, multiply the number of folks in your household by the product of 7 trillion/40, further divided by 12 and you'll get the ugly answer to what each member of your household is paying the government to support the thugs, slugs and reprobates in your neighborhood.
None of the above takes into account the cost of additional police protection and the cost to recover from the effects of crime.
Think about it.
This is just smoothing the way for Hillary-care.
because Medicare, Medicaid, and the govt pension system....school districts, state, city, county, and federal.....are so generous and require little of self-control, our total health bill in this country has gone thru the roof.....
why would health care companies, hosptials, drug companies, doctors, etc hold the line when the know the govt is a virtual bottomless pit ......
When a commodity is free, the demand is infinite.
Once you give the govenment the power over your healthcare, they WILL dictate activities and lifestyle choices that they see as harmful.
Welcome to the machine...
Government meddling did not generate the practice of malpractice law. Malpractice law causes doctors to practice defensive medicine. You go to a doc with a headache, you probably get a catscan and maybe a brain MRI, just to protect him from the 1 in 5 million chance that you have a tumor and he sent you home with aspirin for a few days to see if it got worse. The costs of this multiplied across the country are what causes the problem.
The government is not going to cap lawsuit awards. It's not going to happen.
Healthcare insurance IS going to be an enormous issue of 2008 -- and frankly, from a conservative perspective -- is SHOULD be. It is consuming resources that could be used to grow more valuable areas of the US economy. Like technology. Or weapons systems.
It is taking money out of the hands of entrepreneurs. It is taking money out of the hands of self employed people who are conservative by nature and don't like taking orders.
See, folks in group plans do not understand this. If you go to a company and hire on, the health plan there HAS to take you. There are usually no pre-existing condition exclusions for group plans.
But if you you try to get an individual policy . . . if you've had something as common as high blood pressure in the past, the insurer can either exclude you, or more ugly, take you on but exclude anything related to that pre-existing condition, and folks, that is just about everything. They can collect a premium from you and pay for nothing. Have a heart attack? They don't pay. Have a stroke? They don't pay. Have kidney problems? They won't pay. Pretty much everything could derive from high bp.
Folks This Is the Norm. This is not some fringe number of people. Group plan employees in companies are a small and getting smaller minority of the working population. This is not an issue about welfare types. This is about people with "jobs".
Another thing, folks, more and more people -- baby boomers -- are taking early retirement. That is defined as any age under 65. Medicare kicks in at 65, but not until 65. Folks who want to stop working earlier have to have an individual policy -- and if they had pre-existing conditions they can't get one for less than enormous costs.
The GOP has to have a solution on this or we will lose this issue.
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