It's OUR tax money! LET'S PAY OURSELVES FIRST!

[Cronus Protagonist]

Let's buy ourselves the best healthcare system in the world, one without insurance companies draining the system of cash and efficiency. AFTER we've bought that, we can discuss how to split the rest of the pie.

Are you with me?

[corpseratemedia]

1. right now I am dealing with private insurance interference..i really call it malefeasance

with a medicine that I've taken for years. So yes, let's get the ceo paid for "bureaucrats" out of the dr/patient relationship by directly getting us a public health care system --without lobbyists using OUR money to destroy our health-- that WORKS and doesn't try to kill us for maximum profit!!!

[Cronus Protagonist]

4. I think this concept is so basic that it rings true

Why NOT pay ourselves first? Answer that Mr. TheMan!

[Klukie]

2. I couldn't agree more....

nice post.

[ejpoeta]

3. what do you think of this argument in trying to persuade someone to support a single payer or at

least a public option....

you have a job. you have insurance. you pay your bills and do everything you are supposed to do. you go to work. you aren't rich, but you are doing ok. then you feel off somehow. you go to the doctor to find out what is going on. you find out you have cancer. ok, you have insurance.... we can take care of this. you set up appointments and get ready for surgery and plan on chemo. you try to keep working, but find out you are too sick to keep working and end up having to take leave. but what about your insurance??? you can get cobra.... but it is so expensive!!! oh that's right... there is a subsidy to help folks keep their insurance. well, that helps....

now it has been so long and you are too sick to go back to work and the cobra subsidy is run out and you can't pay the cobra AND the copays.... it is all too much since you are sick and shouldn't have to be worrying about this. you are starting to go under, and now you have lost your insurance. so what are you going to do now??? you have no insurance and can't even get any private insurance because you are sick. what will you do???

maybe you will qualify for medicaid.... but you have too many assets. what are you going to do???

[Cronus Protagonist]

5. KISS

Keep It Simple and Sweet. That's what gets the job done.

[Klukie]

6. Agreed....

But I have heard it as KISS.... Keep it Simple Stupid :fistbump:

[Cronus Protagonist]

7. haha

I doubt that would motivate anyone at all!

[csziggy]

8. That was pretty much my BIL's story but he struggled to keep working

After not feeling right for years he was diagnosed with Stage IV (inoperable) pancreatic cancer. In order to keep his insurance, he had to drag himself into work, all the way through the chemo that let him live for a year and a half. He used all his sick time, all his vacation time, all his unpaid administrative leave time. Changed his hours to work Monday through Thursday so he could get his chemo Thursday afternoons, be sick from it over the weekend, and recovered enough to go back to work on Monday.

He finally was so sick he could no longer work after fifteen months of this. He had stopped the chemo because it was no longer shrinking his tumors and he no longer had the strength to deal with the effects. Two weeks later he was dead.

And this was WITH health insurance, what was considered a very good policy, working for the "happiest place on earth."

Oh, the co-pays and uncovered parts of his care, including assistance from hospice at the end, took almost every bit of savings he and my sister had.

If he had gotten too sick to keep working (personally I think he actually WAS, but he made himself keep working so he did not leave his wife in debt) he would have lost his health care coverage 30 days after stopping working. COBRA would have been available, but would have been prohibitively expensive.

A dying man should have had a chance to take one last vacation with his kids, have one last weekend with his wife without worrying about whether or not he was going to be able to return to work so his insurance would continue to cover his fight to live a few extra weeks.

[CrispyQ]

9. What a heart breaking story.

:hug:

As for your final paragraph, :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[ejpoeta]

10. i wonder what his outcome would have been had he been able to focus on

trying to get better instead of worrying about working and keeping his family from losing everything. what kind of a life is that!! to spend the last two years of your life like that... how awful. I am sorry to hear he had to suffer not only with cancer, but with a healthcare system that would do that to him too.

[csziggy]

11. Yes, and sine President Obama's mother had to spend the end of her life arguing with insurance co.

Companies, I hope he can and will get a good program through.

My surviving older sister (we lost our oldest sister to cancer, too - the same kind Ted Kennedy has) acted as our BIL's patient advocate so she helped a lot. She had done it for our sister and was fired up and ready to go. She tried to work out things with his employer for other people to come in and work in his name so he could take it easy and not be stressed, but they would not allow it. This just reinforces that I will never do anything for the rest of my life that will profit that company - the largest employer in Orlando Florida, so called "the happiest place on earth" if I remember their motto correctly.

[Cronus Protagonist]

13. I wish he was more directly involved in it

However, I fear out congress critters and slimy senators will scupper us all in the settin up of this bill. I think Obama should say here's what I want in it or it won't fly. And make that item a comparable system to the UK's which works well.

[csziggy]

14. Maybe we need to yell at Obama more and worry less about the right wing nuts?

I'm not sure what will work, but the Congress critters need to know how we feel and so does Obama!

[Cronus Protagonist]

15. I do suspect he's doing stuff behind the scenes

He's a smart man and a great organizer. I have to believe he's planning on this being his signature accomplishment and despite all the blue dogs, the Democratics must know that this must work or the country is doomed, and the party. Still, I'd like to see more encouraging signals coming from the pols.

[csziggy]

16. I hope so!

I'm just tired today and not able to think things through.

But I look at what I've just had to pay out of pocket WITH insurance for my shoulder surgery. I expected the $2000 for the deductible, but I am over $1000 out of pocket on top of that adn I am still not finished with the physical therapy. And it sucks that two months after the operation, I am still not sure of my final out of pocket cost.

At the very least we need to have health care that is more affordable and predictable - if I had realized how much higher my out of pocket was going to be, I could have tried to save up (yeah, right, on just over $1000 take home per month, we're going to save extra?!).

[Cronus Protagonist]

17. In Britain or Canada your out of pocket would have been nothing, zero, nada

Nothing less for the USA is acceptable. Are we the greatest country in the world or not? America - Prove it.

[csziggy]

18. Yes, and I wouldn't have had to chose a plan with a $2000 deductible, either

But we could not afford the monthly amount for the plan with the $500 deductible, which was the 'best' choice.

We need better - and we need to do a better educating the American public so this fear mongering does not work. But as long as Rush, Beck, O'Reilly and the ilk are allowed to use hate and lies without controls, we will lose, I am afraid.

[TexasObserver]

12. recommend

[slackmaster]

19. Keeping control of your own money is usually something conservatives argue in favor of

What gives here?