Actual Health Care bill.....

[YardleyLabs]

Now I understand your position on this.
You've decided to let ME (and others who are gainfully emplyed) help pay for your medical bills!!

Thank you for the offer, but I pay my own bills just fine.

[dnf777]

Now I understand your position on this.
You've decided to let ME (and others who are gainfully emplyed) help pay for your medical bills!!

So you're gainfully employed and have private insurance. So am I. I have never used my health insurance. Therefore, if you ever have had a claim on your healthcare, I have helped pay YOUR medical expenses. AAghh! I'm a victim of socialism!!

(I made a few assumptions there, so please correct me if I'm wrong, and I'll find someone else complaining about paying for others to pick on)

Just makin' a point, not trying to get personal,
Dave

[road kill]

I am not exactly sure if I am "gainfully" employed any more.
I think I am a "not for profit" LLC now.

But cynicism aside, I have been thru the cancer ordeal (my wife).
We had as good of insurance as we could have.
Still cost about $200,000 out of pocket.

I got thru it, all bills paid.
We fought it out and lasted 11 months.
Maybe the best 11 months of our 33 years together.
Lost almost everything buying time.

Who has the right to take that option/time away from us?

I would do it again in a heart beat.
I want that option on the table.
I don't want someone else to decide for me.

stan b & Elvis

[dnf777]

I am not exactly sure if I am "gainfully" employed any more.
I think I am a "not for profit" LLC now.

But cynicism aside, I have been thru the cancer ordeal (my wife).
We had as good of insurance as we could have.
Still cost about $200,000 out of pocket.

I got thru it, all bills paid.
We fought it out and lasted 11 months.
Maybe the best 11 months of our 33 years together.
Lost almost everything buying time.

Who has the right to take that option/time away from us?

I would do it again in a heart beat.
I want that option on the table.
I don't want someone else to decide for me.

stan b & Elvis

Our family is going through a similar situation. My grandmother (90) is going through chemotherapy for inoperable cancer. Most though she wouldn't tolerate it 16 months ago when this began. She has gone through it almost unscathed to everyones delight. We have had over a year (and still counting, thankfully) because of her treatment.

This was all done through gov't run medicare, with coal-miner's retirement filling the gap. Out of pocket cost to them....zero.

With all the bashing of gov't run program, I can tell you that private insurance would NOT have covered her latest round of chemo. (that's assuming she wasn't dropped after her diagnosis, as soon as her current policy was up for renewal) Again, I didn't want to get personal, but I was making the point that all insurance programs are a form of socialism...sharing the cost/risk to benefit all who may need it. A pure capitalist would merely say, "what, me pay for you?? no way!" You can either afford healthcare or not on your own. Insurance companies will maximize profit to shareholders by dropping sick people, and signing up healthy people who don't need it.

best regards,
dave

[Eric Johnson]

Jeff-

I spoke a hypothetical and you sneered at it as though it were a real argument.

My point was and is that no bill in Congress is the "plan". What is in Congress is only enabling legislation. The bureaucrats will write the "plan" and that scares the stew out of me. Where Congress says, "A is the law." folks who are not accountable to anyone will write the regulations. The same point was just made by the former Sec of HHS under Clinton....and he's opposed to the "plan" for just that reason.

Eric

[YardleyLabs]

...

But cynicism aside, I have been thru the cancer ordeal (my wife).
We had as good of insurance as we could have.
Still cost about $200,000 out of pocket.

I got thru it, all bills paid.
We fought it out and lasted 11 months.
Maybe the best 11 months of our 33 years together.
Lost almost everything buying time.
...

Stan,

I am sorry for what you went through. My father's experience with a combination of heart surgery and cancer -- paid for by Medicare but with co-insurance amounts exceeding $250,000 -- was similar. With my mother, who had a massive stroke at the age of 44, it was even worse. My father had a policy through Union Carbide that looked great but my mother went over the lifetime max. The million dollars in costs came from my father. There is a reason why medical are a primary cause of personal bankruptcy.

Despite the lack of coverage, both my mother and father received the medical care they needed, and it sounds like your wife did also. Regulations and limitation and bureaucratic interpretations affected the cost of care received by your wife and by my parents. Under any of the plans being considered your costs for your wife and my family's costs for my parents would have been reduced. Is that good or bad?

Jeff-

I spoke a hypothetical and you sneered at it as though it were a real argument.

My point was and is that no bill in Congress is the "plan". What is in Congress is only enabling legislation. The bureaucrats will write the "plan" and that scares the stew out of me. Where Congress says, "A is the law." folks who are not accountable to anyone will write the regulations. The same point was just made by the former Sec of HHS under Clinton....and he's opposed to the "plan" for just that reason.

Eric

I wasn't trying to sneer and apologize if that is the impression I left. The reality of course is that regulations determine the details of all legislation and the regulatory process is where lobbyists exercise their greatest influence. The alternative would be to have laws that were 20,000 pages long instead of 1,000. However, there are limits to what can be changed through regulation and the scare tactics being used to combat health reform seem to have no basis in any proposals that are under consideration.

[tpaschal30]

The real scare is bureaucrats against whom there is no legal recourse will be making our health care decisions.

[road kill]

It finally hit me what the issue is here.

Very few intelligent people want the Gov't. to run/control healthcare, they just want theirs for free!!

"READ the BILL!!"

[dnf777]

The real scare is bureaucrats against whom there is no legal recourse will be making our health care decisions.

As opposed to multi-millionaire CEOs who are currently rationing care? The reason we're even having this discussion is because greedy corporate types are making healthcare availability less ands less to even those who have insurance.

I heard that half of the bankruptcy claims due to medical expense come from people who HAVE health insurance. I was shocked to find that my 12,000/year policy excludes many types of cancer treatment!! Who's rationing that? It ain't the gov't!

[road kill]

As opposed to multi-millionaire CEOs who are currently rationing care? The reason we're even having this discussion is because greedy corporate types are making healthcare availability less ands less to even those who have insurance.

I heard that half of the bankruptcy claims due to medical expense come from people who HAVE health insurance. I was shocked to find that my 12,000/year policy excludes many types of cancer treatment!! Who's rationing that? It ain't the gov't!

One of the things Ilearned is that no matter how good you think your insurance is if you get deeply into cancer and the heavy treatments (chemo, radiation etc.), YOU DON'T HAVE ENOUGH!!

On this I am 100% correct.
Had great insurance (so we thought), lost everything.
401K, savings and our home.
Paid every single cent to every one and am doing very well now, thank God, but it was brutal!!
But we did get all the care we asked for.
I would do it exactly the same again, I pray none of you ever have to face that.
But as hard as it was, imagine dealing with a Gov't. run operation........

People were helpful and we navigated our way thru.
Imagine what you run into in your daily lives in regard to frontline Gov't. employees.
No offense to anyone, but I bet everyone here has a horror story about dealing with the DNR, DOT, IRS, SS, etc.

That's the fear,

"READ the BILL!!"