I think that this is a winner, a lot better than Edwards' or Obama's - qe

UNIVERSAL HEALTH INSURANCE - TIME

This issue has been talked to death for the past 20 years, but there is now a significant change in the political landscape that makes an imminent solution possible: not the ever rising numbers of uninsured Americans, now estimated at 47 million, but corporate America's impatience with the back-breaking financial burden of providing health insurance for its employees. Health care adds $1,500 to the price of every new American car, for instance. "I've had auto executives say to me, 'We're health-care companies that happen to make cars,'" says Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon. As it happens, Wyden has put an elegant and entirely radical health-care plan on the table. According to an independent assessment by the Lewin Group, a nonpartisan health-care consulting firm, it would save $1.48 trillion over the next 10 years.

Wyden would eliminate the current employer-based system. Employers would "cash out" the money they currently pay for health benefits and distribute it as wages; individuals would then pay for their own health insurance--an annual premium to the Federal Government, as part of their income taxes. They would choose their own private plans from a system very much like the one currently offered federal employees. But there would be two mandates: one for individuals and one for insurance companies. The individual mandate would require everyone to participate, especially those who can afford health insurance and choose not to buy it. (By most estimates, these mostly younger people represent one-third of the 47 million currently uninsured.) The destitute--those who receive Medicaid--would join the same system as everyone else; their health-care premiums would be paid by the government. The lower middle class--that is, people who make up to 400% of the federal poverty level--would have their health-insurance payments subsidized on a sliding scale according to income. The second mandate would require insurance companies to cover everyone who applies and charge them the same amount, regardless of pre-existing conditions. (This is called "community rating" in the trade.)

So where's the pain? Up the income scale. Health care would no longer be tax deductible. Those with incomes of more than 400% of poverty (about $82,000) would have to pay for their health-insurance premiums themselves. And the insurance industry will certainly yowl over what promises to be a more tightly controlled market. Of the major candidates running for President, only Mitt Romney--a Republican--has actually passed a mandatory universal system, in Massachusetts, which subsidizes health-care premiums for the working poor. So far, two leading Democrats, John Edwards and Barack Obama, have proposed universal plans--but both require employers to provide health insurance, as Hillary Clinton did when she proposed her plan in 1993. The details of any plan will be hammered out in the legislative process, but when universal health insurance comes to America, it will probably look more like the Wyden plan than those being proposed by the Democrats. According to the TIME poll, 57% of the public favors a universal system of health insurance based on tax credits.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1633082-3,00.html

<insert sound of screeching brakes here>

Uh no. Private insurance companies are obligated to do one thing: maximize their profits, as are all companies, and health insurance companies do that by reducing their costs. They reduce their costs by not paying for your healthcare, by refusing to treat, by cutting corners on treatment. They extract billions of dollars from the healthcare system that would be better spent on actually providing treatment.

Calling mandated private insurance programs 'universal healthcare' is a deliberate effort to obfuscate what they are: corrupt schemes.

tied to this plan should be two HUGE conditions.

1) The insurance company should have no say over what treatment you receive.
2) The government should have no say over what treatment you receive.

Treatment must be between and a doctor and patient only. If you have insurance and a Doctor wants to treat you with antibiotics, they do it. No checking with an insurance company. If your urologist wants a cat scan, they do it. No checking.

No plan that keeps companies whose motive is profit instead of maximizing service for the amount of money they take in will ever have a place in a system our very lives depend on. They will make their profit by cutting service. This is annoying in retail stores. It is FATAL in healthcare.

Insurance companies have to be made NON PROFIT if they want to continue existing. My guess is that they won't.

The profit motive has no place in any vital system, from education to water to fire departments to health care.

Insurance companies and their quest for maximized profit are the PROBLEM. There is absolutely no way they can ever be part of the solution.

Wyden is only correct about getting it out of the employers' domain.

We MUST wean ourselves away from insurance companies - they are just profit-taking middlemen (no offense to any men out there)!

In Australia, you pay taxes on just about everything and public hospitals get money to care for EVERYONE - no middle man involved. There is a private side of things but it only helps you get into surgery faster.

Repeat: we don't NEED insurance companies!

BUT, their lobby has got to be incredibly BIG......it will take guts to change this.

those who have to pay. If someone can afford to pay for insurance, the insurance companies will most certainly charge the most that they can.

they can get away with. Remember, curtailing their ability to charge whatever they want to will result in their chasing profits elsewhere, and that elsewhere is already sick people who need care but who aren't going to get it without a fight.

Their motive is PROFIT, not taking care of sick people.

Gevernment universal health care does not need to provide private rooms, vanity surgery and that ilk. There's no need for taxes to pay for some bimbo's boob job - but the same surgery done as reconstructive surgery after a masectomy, yes.

Universal health care for medically necessary procedures - the rest, the insurance companies can cover.

That is the best solution. Profit should never be a discussion when it comes to vital services, whether that be the Army or your health care.

Can you imagine what people would say if the Army was run as a private company and they didn't provide armored hummvees because it was more expensive to armor a truck than to train a new private? That the 'profit' wasn't there in armoring hummvees...What would people say?

What if the local fire station reduced it's response times to closer to 30 minutes from say 10, because they'd make a better profit. What if they made you pay 200 a month to 'protect' your house from fire. If you paid with a premium plan of 400 a month the response time was cut to 5 minutes. What would people say?

Profit should have no place in something this vital. It's criminal that it does. Absolutely criminal.

and it's killing people on a regular basis, and those it doesn't kill it frequently maims, and often bankrupts.

People in ever other industrialized nation LAUGH at our country when this topic comes up. They laugh at us. What happens here is idiotic to the point of absurdity.

Didn't Blue Cross Blue Shield start as not for profit?

Check out H.R. 676. Real universal health care.

www.healthcare-now.org

Great interview Amy Goodman had with Michael Moore on her show today.

www.democracynow.org

I guess TIME doesn't know that Kucinich is running for President and has co-sponsored HR 676.

I guess it's time for a LTTE to TIME.

Medicare for all would solve all the problems of health care in this country. I have written to my Congressman (California, Cardoza), regarding H.R. 676. I am waiting for a response. I don't know where he stands on this issue so I am looking forward to his answer.

For profit insurance companies are the root of the problem. They must go.

Eliminate the role of the bloodsucking insurance companies, who suck **30-35 CENTS** out of EVERY healthcare dollar!

It's WAY past time for us to catch up with all of the other "first-world" nations.

I have said this in other threads: that is what they are doing in Australia. The insurance companies, like they exist in America, are gone, gone, GONE, and Aussies are getting pretty damned good care for their tax dollars.

who decides on the price of INSURANCE coverage? who decides WHAT is covered?

and most importantly, who decides whether you get reimbursed for health care expenses and how much you get reimbursed?

as long as INSURANCE companies decide, INSURANCE COMPANIES who seek to lower risk and lower expenses, the system is inhumane and unacceptable.

health care must be de-privatized. we should cut the military budget until there are sufficient funds to "protect" the health of each and every American. what good are weapons systems when Americans are dying and suffering because they cannot receive the health care they need??

As many others have said, we don't need universal health insurance, we need universal health care. It's the only pro-life position. Rightwing insurance cos. practice medicine w/o a license & deny people care.

use of Massachusetts as an example. I live in MA and have looked into these plans. I have to carry private insurance (COBRA at $484.28 a month) until October when I qualify for Medicare. I thought the state plans would be cheaper.

Here are a few of the things I found out.

The premiums are age based premiums. A 20 year old will pay about 225.00 a month. I have no idea what a 64 year old would pay, I believe it is about 450.00 a month. That is not affordable. There is talk about premiums being lower if you are below a certain income level but they are still high.

Large deductibles and large co-pays.

No drug payments.

And most importantly:

Your doctor may not subscribe to any of the plans offered.

When I asked about the plan at my doc's office, I was told that he takes only one of the options and that the patients and the office are having a hard time getting the correct coverage and referrals.

Many specialists will not take the insurance at all.

It is very confusing and limited in its scope.


If any of you have time to read this comprehensive article in Monday's Boston Globe, it is worth the time.

http://www.boston.com/news/specials/

The article is called called "Countdown to Coverage".
Progress on this plan will be followed closely by the press, I'm sure there will be tons of problems and complaints.

The Department of Health and Human Services should be the vehicle to implement universal health care, no? But the last go around with Hillary as First Lady showed us what the talking points will be. Straight fear/scare tactics against "big gob'mint.

and to include drug coverage that eliminates the current "donut hole?" . . .

once we have that figure, then we can calculate by what percentage we need to increase ALL federal taxes to cover the cost of universal healthcare . . . of course, a whole bunch of it could also be paid for simply by modestly reducing our "defense" budget from its current grotesque levels, and ending our wars of aggession against other nations . . .

war. Remember when the government was telling us that universal coverage was un-affordable?
And now politicians wonder why we protest the cost of bush's folly.
Trillions for a war we cannot justify and nothing to keep our own citizens healthy. The hypocrisy!

That if a perfectly workable plan were implemented-the wingers would somehow sabotage it from the inside and then say "see, "socialism" doesn't work"? Let's face it, their bullshit is breaking down, so I think sabotaging a workable plan from the inside(if ever implemented in the first place)would be the next logical step for the machiavellian psychopaths who will still have a lot of power no matter who is in the congress/WH. If a good plan is implemented, we need to be able to prove sabotage if it does occurr.

to be a "leading Democrat." After all, while others are just talking about plans that, if elected, they couldn't actually introduce from the executive branch, Dennis Kucinich has actually co-written and introduced a bill for universal health care into Congress.

http://kucinich.us/issues/universalhealth.php

A better plan that Edwards/Clinton/Obama, and a better plan than my own Senator Ron Wyden.

I consider it shameful that his opponents, and that rank and file Democratic voters, don't give him credit for this, and don't offer up more support for his plan.

You don't even have to support his candidacy for president. All you have to do is support HR 676, regardless of what candidate is nominated to run in the general election, or whether that candidate makes it to the white house.

Will Always Be Overpriced

no matter who's paying the profits.