Insurance :slashingtongue

Republican plan to cover just 3 million

Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 5:55 pm  
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The Republican have long criticized and hit away the Democratic plans on many issues. Health care though, have been especially forceful. So, when they when they give out the bill, guess what, they forgot the most essential part of it : Health insurance coverage.

My goodness! I really could not believe it! There are 47 million people not insured in the United States of America. Take away the illegal immigrants and you get 38 million people uninsured. Of this, there are 17 million middle class Americans who are denied insurance or cannot afford it.

At it barest minimum, steps should be taken to ensure that these 17 million people get ensured. But guess how many people the Republican plans cover. In their own words, 750 000 households. In terms of population 3 million people. Yes 3 million people.

Is that what we really call reform? Is this what America has come down to? Where an ideology drives something so much that we are only bothered to cover 3 million people when we need to be covering 17-47 million? Come on!What in the world are they doing?

I have yet to receive the scoring of both plans by the CBO officially, so this is my first impression of the outline that I see. The Democrats claim that their $1 trillion is going to decrease the debt just like the Republicans. From what I scheme through, there are going to be lots of taxes for the top 1% and surtaxes here and there. Their plan includes the public option. It also cuts Medicare by half a trillion over 10 years.

Here are the things I would be looking out for in the Democrat bills. Firstly, what taxes are they going to raise? Are they going to raise corporate taxes which I vehemently oppose, or personal taxes of the top 1%, which I think would be okay? Furthermore, is this just a stop gap measure or are going to control cost over the long term? Can we bring the increases of health insurance cost to down to the rate of inflation? In Medicare, are we cutting it sufficiently; we waste $500billion to $800billion a year on health care; how much of that is Medicare and how much of that is being taken out?

In the Republican bills, there are notably no tax increases. So that should set the record straight for some people. But what stuns me is that it does not include the ceasing of preexisting conditions. How can people be covered if insurance companies still can say that they do not want to cover you? Also, the coverage of 3 million million people is just atrocious! It is short of 18% of the bare minimum and not slightly over 6% of the maximum.

Other than that, the questions that I would be asking is how do they intend to pay for it if they are not cutting cost or raising taxes? What are they missing in their 200 page bill? Bills are usually in the 1000 page region. What are they going to do about the 10 million people (part of the 47 million uninsured) that have the ability to buy insurance but refuse to do so? Let them be and still let the remaining taxpayer payers for their bills?

I would put up my analysis of the bills soon. From what I get, my report on both bills is not a good one., particularly for the Republicans.

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Democrats’ plan to help uninsurables questioned

Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 9:34 am  
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You’re afraid your cancer is back, and a health insurance company just turned you down. Under the health care bills in Congress, you could apply for coverage through a new high-risk pool that President Barack Obama promises would immediately start serving patients with pre-existing medical problems. Wait a second. Advocates for people with serious health problems, as well as some insurance experts, are raising questions about one of the most important upfront benefits in the Democratic health care legislation: a high-risk pool for the medically uninsurable.

Obama proposed the pool in his September health care speech to Congress. Now, concerns are being raised about the design of the high-risk pools. The money would be used to help people in poor health pay premiums.

Obama credits his Republican presidential rival, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, for the risk-pools idea. The six-month wait is in the health care bill the Senate Finance Committee approved last month. “If you are somebody with cancer or a heart condition who needs immediate coverage and immediate treatment, that’s not very helpful,” said Karen Pollitz, a Georgetown University health policy professor.

Both the House and the Senate Finance bills set aside $5 billion for the pools.

If the Democrats’ risk pool starts running out of money, the government may have to start a waiting list, raise premiums or take other unpopular measures.

Read more… Click here ( Powered By Yahoo! News )


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Public option compromise

Wednesday, October 14th, 2009 at 7:59 am  
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A new version of the “public option” has been released. Now, it is going to allow states to decide whether they want the public option or other wise. This has been backed by Governor Howard Dean, the ex-Governor of Vermont.

I have always been jittery when it comes to the clause of the public option in the health care reform bill. I think it is way too close to single payer universal health-care. Though I am not against single-payer universal health-care, I think that we should try all other alternatives first.

However, both parties did not even make an inkling of a suggestion to increase the competition other than the public option. That was all that they could come up with. Hence, when the public option was removed from the bill, I decided to oppose the bill and think that we should kill it.

Right now, there is a compromise being chiseled out by Senators Chuck Schumer and Tom Carper. It is a very simple thing, if you really feel that your state does not want “government in health-care”; your state can opt-out and let other states that want it keep it. It is incredibly straight forward.

That being said, I think that there should be an additional condition to this option. Right now, if you go to the emergency room and you cannot pay for your operation as you do not have health insurance, it would be the Federal Government that has to foot the bill. They cannot just let you die.

Lets assume that this clause is passed, and some states passed public option and some other states did not. If you were a citizen of a State that does not have the public option, you do not have health insurance and you need to go the emergency room, there is a higher chance that the Federal government has to step in. Why should the I, via my federal taxes, be paying for another State’s irresponsibility?

Therefore, should this compromise of the health-care bill be passed, I think that the cost of uninsured health care should be passed on to the States. In that way, whether they have the public option or not, they pay for it. The federal government should lower taxes and the states would increase the taxes. Overall, it should not effect us financially.

I think that the continued opposition to this really underlines how much potential the public option has to be successful. The Republicans fear that this would over time force their states to also adopt the public option. Do you really think that all the 60% of the people in the poll that support the public option are liberals?

When California has the public option and people start to receive health-care as a result of it, don’t you think Arizonans would demand that their state have it too? They know that it would lead to the public option coming up in all the states. In fact, people like me think that it could even lead to a single payer system in the future.

An additional benefit to that is that the State would also be interested in preventive measures so that they can save money. They would rather invest in fitness regimes for children rather than paying their bills when they are older. It is much easier to execute this at a state or local even level rather than the federal government being involved in it.

However, as of now, there is no movement of this new public option plan. Until it has passed the committee votes, I would not be calling for support to kill this bill!

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Terrible Congress!

Tuesday, October 13th, 2009 at 5:27 pm  
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I really do not know if they are just good actors or that they were just blindly following the orders of the health-care lobbyists that are funding their campaigns, but the shock on their faces really disgusts me. How can they claim not to know that when you add demand and take away competition, you are going to raise the cost?

The Senate discussion is still going on while this article is being produced, but it is official; they really lack brains. We have mentioned this weeks ago, that the health care bill would increase cost without the public option or alternatives. How could they not have realized it?

Of course it would. Some are quoted to say that this bill is “a blow-job to the health insurance companies.” I agree. It is not that the intention of the clauses in the bill are to increase the demand, but they do increase the demand. Let me give you two examples.

There is a clause that forces individuals that has the capability to buy insurance but choose not to do so, to purchase insurance or pay a tax. It is a good clause. Why should I pay via my taxes, the hospital bills for someone who could have insurance but refused to buy it? Can they pay for my car insurance because I chose not to pay for it? However, it does increase the number of people that want or need to buy health insurance. In other words, it increases the demand.

If you force insurance companies to accept everyone, they are going to claim that the risk has gone up and that they would have to pass the cost increase to their customers. Also, there is again more customers fighting for the same number of insurance companies. This again increases the demand, without care for supply. There are other parts of the bills too that has the same consequences.

And the entire Congress put together, Republican, Democrat and Independents, they have only come up with one idea that increases the supply (competition). That was the public option. The very fact that there was only one idea that increased demand, it demonstrates the utter incompetence of Congress. Our site had more ideas!

So what did they do to the only clause that increased competition? Of course, they listened to their “paymasters” and removed it. Was it what the citizens wanted? No! 60% of Americans support the public option. So what do you think when you increase the demand and do nothing about the supply; what do you think would happen? Prices to come down because you want it to do so?

My goodness! And they are shocked that the premiums would increase? What school did these people go to? Did they become stupid just before they enter public office? Or is it, and in my opinion, that we are facing the downside of our democracy where corporations donations are more important than our votes?

I keep my stance. As long as there is no measure that increases competition, I think that it is our civic duty to kill the bill! It is going to wreck our country faster than our currently terrible health care system. Spread the word. Kill the bill till it brings the public option back!

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How much should a Health Insurance CEO make?

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 6:38 am  
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I am not a person that is against capitalism. I think it is the single best system in the world. However, just like most people I have shown these figures too, I became really mad. This is similar to the banks taking our tax dollars and then charged us higher on our credit card interest rates.

Jay Gellert – CEO HealthNet – $17000/day
McCallister – CEO Humana – $18000/day
Dale Wolf – CEO Conventry – $34000 / day
Angela Braly – CEO Wellpoint – $37000 / day
Edward Hanway – CEO Cigna – $47000/day
Ronald Williams – CEO Aetna – $93000/day
Stephen Hemsley – CEO United Health Group – $819000 / a day

All the figures above are based on the total compensation given to these CEOs last year, we divide it by 52 weeks and then divide it again to 5 days (on assumption that they do not work on weekends). Stephen Hemsley’s salary is an exemption as we are basing it on his over $4 million / week salary this year.

This is very much as a question to all our readers. It is also the very first The Young Turks blog. I really want to know what they feel about these wages. I guarantee that almost all the viewers would be pist off with Hemsley’s salary but the rest is subjective.

I am not saying that the government should intervene and set salary caps. I think that salary caps should only happen to companies that owe us money, aka the bailout companies. We have also seen such figures for sports personalities and are not shocked by it in any way when we read about it. There are many other CEOs that have earned even much more than this.

But the difference is how these CEOs are making their money. They are literally taking other people’s money, keep some for profit and pay the the rest for the people’s medical expenses. We do not earn. If the profits are very high, that means that they are either charging too high the premiums or are not paying for some people’s treatments. The truth is both.

Even though $800 000 a day may seem small as compared to the overall pie of the insurance companies, I feel that the very fact that there are rejections over all kinds of ridiculous excuses tell me that there is something really wrong with the system.

How about tying CEO wage to customer satisfaction? Isn’t that earning for every dollar? These people are not worth that much! Their pay is being voted on by shareholders. The shareholders would not reward better coverage. They just want more money and would reward the CEO if they earn enough money.

In my opinion, I think that earning $20 000 a day is reasonable for these CEOs. Let us know how much you think a CEO of a health insurance company should earn in the comments below.

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