Healthcare Reform - Abandoning the Self Employed

[autorank]

Michael Collins

The most creative sector of the business community has a dagger at its heart in the form of the relentless, unyielding, and over burdening cost of health insurance. The self-employed and very small businesses have seen their insurance premiums climb 20% to 75% since 2009. To purchase an adequate family plan, a self-employed person will pays an amount 50% to 70% of the nation's median, $32,000 a year, for family health plan. This includes premiums, deductibles, and out of pocket expenses. That is twice the cost for relatively generous plans at medium to large size companies. Very small businesses, two to twenty employees, pay about the same (Image: Paul Henman)

Wasn't health reform supposed to take care of just this sort of inequity? Didn't the title of the bill say it all? The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act. There is no protection for the self-employed when they have these stark choices facing them due to unaffordable insurance rates. They can give up working for themselves; buy adequate insurance and take a huge hit to income; buy a substandard plan and hope that whatever comes up is covered; or, abandon insurance at real risk to their health and, in some cases, their lives.

More at Economic Populist

[Abq_Sarah]

1. They really don't care about the self employed

Or small business, nor do they have any understanding of what it takes to work for yourself. If they had, they wouldn't have inserted the 1099 provision into the law.

[autorank]

5. I'm a proud memeber of that group. You are so right

We could just drop dead and they'd count their profits all the same. Shame on them.

And they have the nerve to talk about the moral obligation to pay mortgages on bad paper with
clearly illegal actions to create the paper. I'd say their morality is relative.

[truedelphi]

2. K & R. Up is down, Black is White, Under is Over, and the

The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act

is just another ambitious title for a program that accomplishes the opposite.

The opportunity squandered by Obama to really truly knock the Bureaucracy of the Big Insurers to the ground really sickens me any and every day that I think about it. He was more in favor of Rahm meeting with the Big Insurers and their Execs than in meeting with Progressives like Kucinich. Obama met with some southern conservative Senators over forty times. He met with Kucinich exactly once, and judging from the results of that meeting, I guess he threatened to throw Kooch out of the plane unless he promised to vote for the bastardized bill.

So now we have thirty two thousand dollar a year health insurance for the self employed. To think our household was paying a mere twelve thousand a year just four years ago!

Coming soon - "organic food" from China brought about by the "Food Safety Act." So what if those crops are grown by water poisoned with cadmium or lead; it's all that will be on the grocery shelves.

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Until americans take to the streets en masse

nothing is going to change. I have said it here many a times... oligarchies do not care about the little people.

[truedelphi]

4. Rather scary stuff:

State Insurance Commissioners in Charge (From your article)

The very same people who failed miserably to protect the self-employed and small businesses in the past are now in charge of protecting them in the future. They were written into the health reform legislation early on. They have powers to determine the share of insurance premiums spent on your medical care and much more.


my reply --
YIKES!!

[autorank]

7. That's kind of like Bush giving Tenet the medal of freedom;)

[formercia]

10. Being a butt-boy for the Mob pays.

I got the lecture:

"You can have a great career and a wonderful retirement or flip hamburgers. The choice is up to you."

That's how the "System" works. It's very simple.

[Me.]

6. K & R For What's A Truly WTF Moment

[autorank]

8. WTF is right! Living it is unreal

:wtf::hide::wtf::hide::wtf:

[autorank]

9. If you're going to unrec this one, justify it

[Me.]

13. I Often Think Unrec Is A Way Of Venting

That Has Nothing To Do With Actual Thread.

[autorank]

14. :)

[mmonk]

11. Welcome to my world.

Must be why I'm considered part of the "extreme left".

[Faryn Balyncd]

12. I know a self employed couple whose premiums rose to $22K for $20K deductble despite good health and

.....no health claims that exceeded their deductible (ie, nothing paid by the insurance company for decades). They are in their early 60's, and have been denied coverage by lower cost plans with lower deductibles.

And when they have diagnostic studies done, because their insurance company has not negotiated a discount, they are given bills which, like all those who are denied coverage, average 200% to 400% higher, and sometimes as much as 600% higher, than the charges which hospitals and other providers charge the insurance companies that negotiate charges aggressively. If they offer to pay in advance, they are often offered a 20% "discount", and still expected to pay several hundred % more than major insurance companies pay.


This is a common experience for self-employed individuals in the 55-64 age range.




And Paul Ryan, Jeb Hensarling, and the Republicans want to replace Medicare with vouchers!!








:kick:

[saras]

16. $22k is more than I've GROSSED some years being self-employed

Not to mention more than it costs to go to a country with a good medical system and simply pay cash for doctoring.

[truedelphi]

19. There's also that "wonderful" RW meme floating around

That high deductibles are very good - just so that we in the middle class never get the notion we are as deserving of heart procedures as a rich Halliburton guy like Dick Cheney.

If we deserve life saving procedures - we only need to sock away half a million bucks or more.

[FogerRox]

15. Gotta rise prices before the bill takes effect

[Lorien]

17. Myself and most of my friends are self employed

few of us have health insurance. We simply cannot afford it.

[autorank]

18. And you deserve it

Just outrageous that you can't get it. With a little planing, community health centers, already in place, could do wonders. But planning is apparently not allowed ever since the ruling elite decided to give up thinking.