Baucus health care = family of 4 would pay $11,080 - $3,970 tax credit

A family of four headed by a 45-year-old making $63,000 a year is in the middle of the middle class. But that family would pay $7,110 to buy its own health insurance under the plan from the committee chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont.

The family would get a tax credit of $3,970 to help pay for a policy worth $11,080. But the balance due — $7,110 — is real money. Maybe it's less than the rent, but it's probably more than a car loan payment.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33161911/ns/politics-health_care_reform/

are freakin' insane. :wow:

I will support no such mandate.

Do they have any 'predictions' of what the final plan will even look like?

It's 'interesting' that they waste their time on this.

Australia could sink into the ocean and they probably wouldn't cover it until maybe the 3rd day after it happened.

Exactly! I am sick of it. They continue to misreport and mislead and otherwise push this nonsensical propaganda over and over and over as if this ONE Committee's draft version is "the" plan. Forget the HELP Committee version that will essentially torpedo this nonstarter in the Senate once the financing details are finalized (assuming the joint Committee works that out with the House Ways and Means Committee, which per the Constitution is THE true holder of the purse NOT the Senate Finance Committee), let alone the combination of the 3 House bills, the result of which must be blended with the final Senate version.

and we'd do well to get upset when they do, and let them know that we're upset. Otherwise we'll end up with a horrible
'solution' to the health care crisis - one dreamed up by insurance execs.

and I am nearly priced out ..I fully expect to have to choose my house or my health come January....

This is why a lot of people are upset. No details yet, but we being told it will cost families a lot more money per year.

Who wants to sign up for that?

people want covered but are unaware of the real prices.

costs and lessens the burdeons.

Who pay? How about the people with the golden parachutes? No loopholes.

If corporations were really taxed at 35 percent(and not given tons of shelters, loopholes and "hidey holes"), this country would be wealthy enough to fund both a large military AND single-payer health insurance coverage for its citizens.

The problem is the pricing, which the industry demands because they can; inclusive the pharmaceutical, insurance, health care equipment and provider industries alike. The only thing that will happen when you give them a bigger pot of mandated funding is higher prices, as demand by those who otherwise couldn't afford procedures increasingly strain the systems existing capacity, simple supply and demand.

The only way to encourage more competitive health care pricing is to force competition, not through mandatory insurance (as health insurance regardless of who it's administered is a loss leader, as it's impossible to provide most access to care below their respective average contribution); and the only way to encourage all access to basic services at a reasonable cost to all, is to likely provide each citizen a modest tax credit on the order of a few thousand dollars each, which may be accrued and used as each sees best for themselves, while requiring the industry competing for access to those dollars to meet certain pricing/profit criteria known to be achievable, and openly publish their pricing and quality records, enabling consumers to choose the best provider for themselves.

Yes this may not enable whose with nothing to spend 100's of thousands of other peoples earnings unless saving a portion of their credits over many years, but it does enable all access to basic services, and encourage more competitive pricing to all's benefit (with the possible exception of the industries who for years have been enabled to rap the sick by charging excessively high prices, as only encouraged by current mandatory insurance proposals, predominantly for the political and financial benefit of the politicians and corresponding industries alike.)

Want to see despair, wait a handful of years as heath care pricing continues to escalate, and the average insurance policy exceeds $20K/year and beyond; and our representatives have corruptly mandated all pay or else; lose the ability to purchase a home, food, clothing, etc. and thereby jobs otherwise employed within these industries will result. Just like cap-in-trade, being proposed for the benefit of a few industries based on fraudulent hypothesis that CO2 will be the death of us all, while truly being the basis of all life on earth, forming through photosynthesis the organic compounds the base of our food chain, and through millennium the fossil fuels who's combustion merely releases CO2 from whence it originally came to enable the cycle to repeat, being in effect the ultimate form of stored solar energy; without sufficient concentration of CO2 within our atmosphere, life would be unsustainable.

to be another lead up to a Wall Street bubble that will bite is in the butt, I do not accept your premise that the need to limit carbon emissions is based on a fraudulent hypothesis. The earth managed to photosynthesis for a very long time on its own without us exponentially increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

The idea was that the premiums being currently paid would be eliminated but largely offset by the health care employer, employee, and individual tax.

get so much more for their tax dollars than we do.

"For simplicity's sake, the cutoff point comes at about the $60,000 level, slightly above the average Canadian family income...

In very rough figures, the federal finance department calculates that Canadians pay an average 35 per cent of their income in taxes and Americans pay 30 per cent - 5 per cent less."

http://www.canadiansocialresearch.net/taxes.htm

We don't need to spend so much as a dime more than what we are already spending. We jsut need to get the worthless sociopathic shitstain middlemen out of the picture.

Off the top BEFORE you even add in other cost saving measures....

There is NO way to keep insurance profits in the mix and pass affordable insurance.

Solution: REMOVE THE LEECHES

For example, my daughter, who makes 10 bucks per hour, but owed $600 AFTER INSURANCE for her portion of the bill for having cancerous lesions removed from her head. That's 60 hours of labor! What working person can afford that?

Family of four -- no way could I have afforded 7k for premiums when my kids were young.

pays about $355 per month or $4,260 a year. About half of what our Congress wants us to pay.

And these Congress critters make a whole hell of a lot more than $63,000 per year.

So a Congress member makes twice what an average American makes and yet pays about half for medical than what the Average American will have to pay when they are done "reforming" health care.

I was paying $279/mo as a federal employee in 1990.

The costs if our supposed leaders would pay otherwise, would be well over $15K plus their Medicare taxes, which in effect we pay all of for them; although most seemingly haven't a clue about much of anything.

and people wonder why there is distrust and confusion. There is no one conducting the choir.

....Douglass said it's premature to draw any conclusions while the bill is being shaped in Congress. But House leaders are also cutting back their legislation to meet Obama's target.

Acknowledging the affordability problem, Baucus' committee voted Friday to exempt millions of people from the requirement to buy insurance and reduce penalties for those who fail to do so. But that would mean leaving at least 2 million more uninsured — not very satisfying to Democrats who started out with the goal of coverage for all.

"I think we've got to do something about it," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. "We've got to make sure health insurance is affordable for the middle class."

of real help (I have a HSA).

like in Canada.... might pay about $500+- in taxes though, we can't have that!!!!!

I know that's what the national average cost per person is per year, but keep in mind, not everybody pays that much in taxes. The average wage earner would pay way less than $3600 the difference is made up from corporate taxes and higher income earners, they pay more remember.

Actual expenses, not premiums.

There is NO FINAL BILL YET! NOBODY knows how much the premiums might be yet. I had to laugh when a talking head on CNN said that so many people don't really know what the public option is! They interviewed a senior citizen & asked what the president could do to make them feel comfortable with his health care plan. They said "I want specifics. Everything has been pretty vague so far." Well no sh*t Shherlock, there isn't a final bill yet so there are no specifics YET!

I posted this to help keep us all informed. We need to know these things so we can interpret the truth and fight the propaganda.

We need to be activist and let our Senators and representatives know that this bill is not acceptable. Regardless if our representative is Democrat or Republican or if they support the bill or do not.

Let them know, we don't like what we are hearing.

that speculated on the cost and then came to the conclusion that "Medicare is NOT the panacea you think it is"

Guess that thread served no purpose as it had nothing to do with HR 676.

:shrug:

To what they are discussing and putting forward, even for debate? And LET THEM KNOW WHEN WE'RE DISPLEASED by those directions?

How else do we get a say in the legislative process?

It seems to me simply sitting on our hands not saying anything until they 'have a final bill' is NOT the right way to do this. The loudmouth minority screaming at town hall meetings had an impact, sensible people should be working hard to counter that and make sure congress keeps on track.

Our friends in some European countries pay of to 50% in taxes, for the generous services they receive.

(I'm not defending Baucus, just saying there must be better arguments out there.)

for a ride.

They may pay upward of 50% for all services, but certainly not for health care - which is what is being discussed in this thread.

NHS is around 11.5% (with a cap).

Other social services that Europeans receive have nothing to do with what they pay for health care per capita, which is 1/2 to 2/3 what we pay.

All those taxes don't go directly to health care.... that amount covers all the "social" programs, which are many, and people get a lot more for their tax dollar over there, child care, pregnancy leave, education, as well as good medical.

Because all of them have mandates, subsidies, and fines. Even the ones with a public option.

This is not unique to the Baucus draft bill.

I too would be interested in those facts.

http://www.kff.org/healthreform/sidebyside.cfm

There is also, somewhere, a website that allows you to enter your income, etc, and get a sense of what your premium would be under the different proposals - someone posted it on DU earlier this week and I failed to bookmark it (darn it). I believe they are extrapolating from the details in each bill.

Perhaps someone else around here recalls the thread . . .

http://healthreform.kff.org/SubsidyCalculator.aspx

But a note of caution after seeing how they portrayed the August tracking poll, links are in the thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=6365319&mesg_id=6365319

snip>>

Now their August poll has just been released and they did not half sample the public option or single-payer questions, what they did do is include the word "Medicare" when asking about the public option and exclude it from the question about single-payer, guess what happened to the single-payer poll...it dropped.

In addition to the charts that they post, they also post the questions with the numbers listed for each question from prior polls. You would think there might be consistency in listing prior numbers, but that is not what they did with the August list, they posted the higher number for the public option and the lower number for SP.

In HR3200 it's $5,000 for a single and $10,000 for a family of 4. Both the premiums and deductibles may go up annually depending on the cost of living.

There will also be costs for things not covered in the health care bills - like dental and vision for adults.

We are being scammed.

You still have up to $10K worth of deductibles and co-pays.

So if you don't have an extra $4,000 floating around in your budget you're still shit out of luck

which would be $1,260 a year with the employer adding an additional $1,260 a year and extending Medicare to that family. It seems like a better deal to me.

One wonders if this family would even end up enough in taxes for this to be useful after standard deductions and exemptions are made.

channeling Marie Antoinette.

Plus there would be prescription costs, dental and vision on top of everything else.

This plan would not be in ANY way "affordable" for such a family. The fucking congresscritters and Prez have NO freakin' concept of what "affordable" is for average working people.
Fuckers.

Right now If I want decent health coverage, with less than a $1000 deductible, no lifetime maximums, no preexisting conditions, etc, it'll cost me over $2,000 a month for my family. That's over $24,000 a year. Obviously i can't afford that. So i have shitty insurance right now that has a $10,000 annual deductible, a $1,000 presecription deductible, a low lifetime cap, a low annual cap, etc. It's not even good catastrophic insurance, and I pay $500 a month for my family (my kids are on schip and right now because of it they ahve amazing health care and it doesn't cost me a penny)

So I'll lay it out there, I can't afford $1,000 a month which is what I read with $11,080. Even then what do I get for $1,000 a month? zero deductible? $500 deductible?, no prescription deductible? what about lifetime caps, preexisting condtions, etc?

That tax credit. Do i get that monthly or is it an annual tax credit? Like most americans I care more about how something is going to affect my monthly budget, rather than some abstract annual thing.

If the government were to come to me today and say we need you to pay $1,000 a month for health insurance or we'll fine you, I don't know what I'd do. I literally couldn't pay that. Plus if it doesn't give me excellent insurance then what's the god damned point?

:hi: