I don't understand why these aspects of health ins. don't piss off even the most far-right wingnut!

[Roland99]

Consider these facts in health insurance:

• Switch jobs, lose old health insurance and have to apply for new insurance.
      - This brings up the point that a new application often means a waiting period for "pre-existing conditions". Better hope not to have one as it means paying 100% out-of-pocket for a few months!
  
  
• Lose a job, pay 2-, 3-, 4-times as much via COBRA to maintain the same policy. Good luck paying those exhorbitant premiums WITHOUT A JOB!
  
  
• Work for a small company, pay a higher premium.
      - A smaller company can't negotiate a lower premium. No "economies of scale". Doesn't matter if everyone is healthy and hardly ever files a claim.
  
  
• Be healthy, pay a higher premium.
      - This can easily happen at a smaller company that has a couple of employees whose families have had major claims (cancer, for instance).
  
  
• Company executives decide to switch insurance companies for whatever reason (CEO doesn't like carrier, CFO knows someone at carrier B, company can save money, etc.)
      - Forces employees to verify physicians used are members of the new plan. If not, pick a new physician. Physician may be a member of the plan but hospital used may not be (see the situation in Louisville, KY this summer between Norton Hospitals and Anthem insurance.) This can mean the delay or even cancellation of much-needed procedures, including surgery. So much for being able to always choose your own doctor or hospital!(This applies to the first point, too.)
  
  
• Find out insurance carrier B has a great plan at a great price but is not licensed to sell in the state. Stuck with carrier A. This really sucks in metropolitan areas that straddle state lines.
  
  
• Insurance company provided via corporate benefits raises deductible and increases co-pays.
      - Switch to another carrier but pay much higher premiums due to not being a member of a larger group. Or...put up with higher out-of-pocket expenditures on each claim.
  

How can *anyone* defend an infrastructure so stacked against the consumer?? How is it fair to be healthy and pay a higher premium simply because one works for a smaller company? How is it fair to pay a higher premium simply for living in a different state?


As an aside, it reminds me of the way the cell phone carriers work here in the U.S. Want a particular phone? Have to go with a specific carrier. Vice versa, if you want a particular carrier, you're stuck with the phones provided by them. (This doesn't take into account people acquiring unlocked phones but the great majority of cell phone users won't go through that trouble.)



HR 676!!!
http://www.pnhp.org/docs/nhi_bill_final1.pdf

[treestar]

1. Even far right nuts should realize they could lose their job

I think they just don't want to face that possibility, so they go into denial.

[waiting for hope]

2. Also, working for a small company would mean

you may not even have health care. I've had two jobs in the last six years that didn't/couldn't offer it.

[Roland99]

5. Or be self-employed and have to find a carrier on your own.

[Davis_X_Machina]

3. The social provision..

...would be available to people different from them, whom they don't like, at their expense.

The salient fact in American politics -- and we forget it at our peril -- is that there are plenty of people who would volunteer to live with their family in a cardboard box under a railroad bridge, and live on sparrows toasted on an old curtain rod over an open fire, if only you would guarantee them that the people in the next box over -- black, gay, foreign, liberal, different -- don't even get the sparrow.

There are even enough to make a party, fight elections, win an election, and form a government.

They have in the past, they can in the future.

[lordsummerisle]

4. Very well said n/t

[Darkhawk32]

6. Simple: There's a black man in the White House.

[spin]

7. The propaganda conservative pundits have been preaching...

says that Obama wants to turn our country in a communist or socialist nation.

Heathcare is a complicated and difficult issue to understand and when the mainstream media refuses to take the time and effort to present the facts on how heathcare in other countries is superior to ours and costs less, it's easy to understand why our citizens are so misinformed.

Reasonable efforts to reach out to people and discuss their feelings on what measures they would like to have performed at the end of their lives are portrayed as "death panels". I've had a living will for many years. No big deal.

The sad part is that most people have access to computers and know how to use Google. The amount of info available to our society is amazing, and yet we tend to be too lazy to do the necessary research.

[Kansas Wyatt]

8. Probably because someone has told them that the Democrats...

Are responsible for all those things happening to them.

To the ones it matters to, I bet someone has fed them a bunch of bullshit about how the Democrats are responsible for it.

Most of those idiots probably think that the Republicans gave them Social Security and Medicare as well. Yes, I've ran into people who thought that.

[Roland99]

9. You meant to say..."Demoncrats"?

;-)