Mandatory health insurance coming to a state near you!

You can't afford health insurance? Well, our politicians have found the perfect answer. They will force you to pay for health insurance. Massachusettes was the first, now California, next Maine. How do you all feel about it? What problems do you foresee?

Premiums for individuals are now expected to be around $380 a month.
Low and moderate income people are going to take it on the chin.
Critics complain that subsidies are not enough and they are asking
the state to push the compliance deadline back one year.

the MA plan is community rated -- no underwriting allowed (in general), so no pre-existing exclusions, or rate increases.

There *may* be rate adjustments allowed for age and/or smoking status, I'm not sure of the exact language adopted in that regard.

because you can't suck blood out of a stone and you can't expect low waged people to be able to afford to fatten insurance executives on income that doesn't even support them as far as food, clothing, transportation and safe housing goes.

Rich GOPs should NEVER be near this issue. They simply have no clue.

This is the latest attempt by the kleptocracy to put off real healthcare reform. It is bullshit and the Mass plan is already unravelling as they try to pin down the financial details.

California Massachusettes Maine and other progressive states would be better off creating a national universal healthcare compact to group together to finance a payroll tax based single payer insurance program despite the lack of action from the federal government.

Frankly there are many, many people who are unable to afford any sort of health insurance, hell, they can barely afford to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. What are they going to do with such people when they are busted for no insurance? Slap a fine on them?

Sorry, but this notion of mandatory health insurance is just another in a long line of corporate giveaways to the insurance industry. While common sense dictates that you should have home, health and auto insurance, I find that mandating it, especially health insurance, is utterly wrong.

and can't afford to buy food. Only the repukes could have come up with something so stupid & heartless.

It is a real joke. The estimated cost for an individual is almost $400.00 a month. If you are retired but under 65, work for low or minimum wage, or for a company that does not offer any support for payment of health insurance, you are in deep trouble. I swear the politico's have no idea what it is like to sit down and juggle a months worth of bills and see what you can pay and what you can delay. This plan is a boondoggle and will not work. There is a penalty for not signing up too. You are required to buy insurance. If your income is low enough, a subsidy kicks in but it is still no substitute for national health care. Again, if you are wealthy or working for a company providing good health benefits, all well and good. Millions of us are not so lucky. I have been laid off. When my COBRA runs out, I will have to find a way to pay for this coverage. As a senior, I am really past prime income earning stage. Nothing seems to be out there in the job market for my not-so-contemporary skills and at my age, I do not have the energy to back to school. Talk about rock and hard place.

If your low wage and your employer offers insurance but you can't afford it, I don't think you will be able to get the subsidy. I'll have to cut my hours to make sure I am not eligible for my employer's plan.

something like this would work?

That's the Medicaid that working people could buy into that earned under 200% of poverty. I went looking to try to find out about this and saw the same thing. I don't know if the rules have changed and I could only find old information or if that is the way it will stand.

It would be nice to be able to find out what's going on for sure.

Own a house? Drive a "newer" car? Have some paid up life insurance assets?

There has to be means testing to determine what qualifies as "needs help".

I'm sure that after you sell everything you have, spend it all on "insurance", and then end up destitute, that there "might" be some help for you ..

All this is just a natural convergence of circumstances, carefully put into motion to strip the boomers of any wealth they might have accumulated for their old age.

It happens with each generation..

The vultures who write the laws make sure they set things up to continue to "feed" their contributors..:puke:

I'm paying 3/5 of my income for housing. If I have to pay another 1/4 for insurance that's not going to leave much. And there are plenty of people around here who earn less than I do.

So we're all screwed.

and there will be lots of folks who cannot afford it. I have been speaking out against this plan since I first heard about it.

That said, if individual health insurance is really available at $400 a month regardless of pre-existing conditions that's a real bargain in today's market.

I'm in an employee group (and am generally unable to get coverage on my own). Our family premium as part of that group is $1500+ a month. (Family of 3, presumably more than individual coverage, but less than 3 x individual coverage). I am only insurable as part of a group, or during open enrollment if I have to buy it independent from an employment setting. The cost of open enrollment insurance for me - or for any member of my family, for that matter - is over $1000 a month.

It is not the answer. Why the fucking hell cant we look at Canada or European systems for the proper solutions???

And they wonder why people aren't enlisting... What's to fight for?

I've volunteered for an organization working for Universal Single Payer. I called more organizations that I care to remember (waaay over a hundred), and they all wanted to gripe about health care, but when it came down to it, NOBODY would commit to working for it.

It's easy to gripe, it's easy to share your hard luck story.

But if you really SERIOUSLY want European-style health care, you're going to have to put out the energy.

Otherwise, this is what we get. :(

plain and simple. There is no way to enforce this, hell, it may not even get past the courts, you cannot add a surcharge for living. States will underfund it for the poor, and the poor will be in permanent debt due to not only health care costs, but also owing the states for whatever fines they accumulate. This isn't a serious proposal, a serious proposal would be single payer health care that covers everything that's medically necessary without qualifications.

That if you are eligible for insurance through and employer but can't afford it, you are not going to be able to get on the affordable state subsidized plan. This is going to be a huge problem. Wages are low, insurance is high and a lot of people will not be able to buy into their employers plan or get on the state plan. Unless something changed. I thinking I will have to move.

Do any of these scheme limit the profits the insurers are allowed to make off these policies - perferrably to what Medicare's overhead is (which is about 3% I think)

I doubt it but I thought I would ask.

Hmmm, thanks to Bush's comments, my earlier praise for Governor Groper may have been premature?

garnishment of wages, and or liens on any property you may have..

They WILL get their pound of flesh.

Then they will have to cart away my body either to jail or the cemetary

it's hard to keep track

You have to make the for profit health industry want to get out of the business. This legislation like in Massachussetts and that Arnold is trying to push in California is written by the health insurance lobbyists and industry. It's another corporate win, win to suck at the government teat and those who can't afford health insurance now.

We need to lobby our politicians to put Medicare on the open market for employers, unions and individuals to purchase like they do regular health insurance. It's not perfect and it's underfunded but it is single payer and all the bureaucracy is in place to administer it. Medicare could cut into the money that is being given to the for profits and it could use that infusion of fresh funding to improve its coverage. Not only that administrative cost for Medicare are 2% to 3% compared to the insurance industry's 8% to 15%.

For those too poor to buy insurance, Medicare could be extended to them by the government. Since Medicare costs less to run, it can be sold on the open market for less than catastrophic insurance with huge deductibles today. Medicare's deductible is still $100 and pays 80% of approved amounts. You can choose your own doctors and go to the ER when you think you need to not when your insurer lets you. Private insurers can't compete with this. It will force them out of the business if they can't meet Medicare's coverage or better for the same price.

AND....it's free market in practice, something the corporations can't bitch about.

Are there any organizations that are working for this plan? How do we get out lawmakers to listen?

a spokesman on a radio show I was busy and didn't write it down. So I don't know the website, but I'm sure they will surface again. But we can pressure our Congresspeople to do this. They might be more willing to tackle it this way than cutting the insurance industry out of it altogether at first.

it hurts a lot less if you never see the money. keeps costs down, too.

i think they should allow people to invest extra money in their social security accounts, too.

Medicare. However, if they lift the cap which is now at $96,000 a year in salary to snag money from all those rich executives and others we hear about, then some statisticians claim that there will be enough to save social security and improve and extend coverage on Medicare.

My suggestion about selling it on the market is to push the privatized health care industry out of the market with market forces that they can't argue about, then we can adjust the program to single payer universal coverage finally.

If you don't carry minimum liability insurance, at least in Arkansas, you can't register your car and the cops will stop you FAST for no tags. My car insurance, liability only, when I have never had an accident or a moving violation, is over $1200 a year. I've never even had a parking ticket. They'll figure out some way to make us do it, and it makes me sick.

your insurance rate sounds pretty darn high...especially for liability ony.

edited to add that I misread your post, Arnold's plan sucks, but SB 840 which he just vetoed after it passed the California Senate and House is the best plan I have seen.

Insurance companies eat up 30% of health care dollars.

The problem with the Massachusetts plan is that it does NOT eliminate the Insurance companies and will be a huge bonanza for them, hospitals, doctors, the pharmaceutical industry and others in the medical professions.

They also fail to mention that $7.5 MILLION was spent lobbying the legislature by the above..

HEALTHCARE REFORM PROPOSAL COMPARISON-(SB 840 vs. Arnold)
http://www.onecarenow.org/healthcarereformplancompare.htm



California's universal health care plan proposed by Sheila Kuehl is MUCH different and doable!

http://www.onecarenow.org

vetoed in the end by Arnold, who is now presenting his corporate friendly giveaway to the health insurance industry plan that is very much like Massachussett's.

Forced to pay away wages for unused medical care, the twenty/thirty/fourty/fifty/sixty/seventy-something worker looks
forward to this revelatory way to thieve money... minimum wage better go up that much or they should just
shackle the workers to their machines so they can't escape.

we need everybody on the same policy with the same benefits
Nobody needs to go Bankrupt for healthcare bills

its BS

Senator Kuehl plans to re-introduce SB 840 next year
http://capa.pnhp.org/senator_kuehl_plans_to_reintroduce_sb_840_next_year.php

and read SB840's text, history, legislative analysis and Gov Shwantzisbigger's veto message at

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/postquery

Ahnold made a huge mistake vetoing this bill ! It would have saved the state $6 Billion and it ISN'T socialized medicine as they like to call it. "I cannot support a government-run health care
system..." what praytell is the federal Medicare system ? and the CA state system in effect already ?? Logic escapes him.

And thanks. It would be nice to get to see a doctor. :hi: