DISQUS

Ryan · 6 months ago

There's no plan that's best for everybody.

Silhouette · 6 months ago

Those numbers are skewed as well and the semantics manipulated to make it look rosy. I have a friend who pays more on her "health insurance" than she does on her mortgage and utilities combined each month.

She had paid into a fund for some 20 years while remaining essentially problem-free. When she became sick with a terminal illness, the insurance company jacked her premiums so friggin' high to make sure their insane profit-level was maintained. All her premiums all those years and her total health costs haven't even amounted to a third of that. Add to it the insurance company took that premium money, reinvested it and made a killing off it is that way and you have probably less than a sixth of what she paid in. She pays more in premiums now than it costs in procedures each year. So they're still making money off of her..a killing...literally...and of course she has to pay the deductables so actual costs are offset even more for the company.

Then what the doctors do to compensate for any shortfalls they experience from medicare users is to triple the actual reasonable charges for health care so that the insurance companies end up paying for the lack in what medicare pays. Medicare knows this and only offers a third of what the medical charges are. It's a game. And the net result is that people on private insurance are already paying for universal health coverage, without knowing it. The pharmaceutical companies cut back-room deals with insurers to provide low cost medicine to the poor and stick it to the middle and upper incomes.

They just don't want you to know you're already paying for the duct-taped universal health care because if you did, you'd want government oversight on your input money and of course insurers couldn't control the scam.

That's why they're going to sink hundreds of millions to convince you that the universal health care you already pay for anyway needs to not be under an oversight plan. Organized crime doesn't like spotlights on their back room deals that never benefit the consumers..

GreenDreams · 6 months ago

The thread from yesterday is a much better discussion. Reagan, as usual, adds nothing to the discussion but fringe spin and BS. And as usual, I haven't read it all, and won't. Worst "Guest Voice" on TMV.

DLS · 6 months ago

There is no instant, fantastic, magical solution, here as with any other pet-left cause. Pragmatism rules best here; there may be widely seen as no real alternative, in the end, as the "justification" for health care for everyone. But that's about all that can really be said. At this point we have to wait and see where the current debates and initial moves in Washington go and determine what the people there favor and what they disfavor. Note the picture is clouded because (once again) Dem politicians such as Chris Dodd have connections to the established health care industry ("Big Health"), similar to "Countrywide" Chris Dodd's ties to the financial industry he was at the forefront of "reforming." I wish they would just clear their heads (get 'em back out in the air) and just offer Medicare to everyone or give everyone the same federal bennies the federal folks get, and be done with it. The "public option" is just window-dressing game-playing (and a way to slam the private sector by engineering it to lose in unfair "free market" [sic] competition to the federal government).

Silhouette · 6 months ago

My guess is lobbying $$$$ and bribery will spur the 'debates' over the issue in Congress. The insurance lobby doesn't want the debates getting all realistic and logical...and God forbid...PUBLIC...

...lol...

acertar · 6 months ago

Thanks very much! If you find that link for the search engine, let me know.

acertar · 6 months ago

Excellent! Now can I tell the world?