Health Care Legislation And You
I've had a conversation going on with a self professed libertarian friend of mine on a well known social media website about the health care reform bill.
Since I mine this blog for material that goes there I figure I can reverse the process.
What goes around comes around, people.
I think that the thought was, get something done while the majority is there, and fix it later. Little did they know that a lot of the opposition for various and sundry reasons, some good, some bad, and some downright in the pay of the insurance lobby, were going to do their level best to shit can health care reform of any sort.
It's interesting to note that the American Medical Association supports the administration's health care reform efforts. They figure that it's something they can work with and improve.
Obviously if your employer provides good insurance you're sitting pretty, but remember Danny Bogart's First Law of Insurance: Insurance companies are not there to pay claims.
Had we not had insurance, the prevention would not have been in place and she'd have ended up at Broadlawns for a double mastectomy in a couple of years and no good chance that it'd fix the problem, all courtesy of the taxpayer. It's really no different than preventive maintenance on your car. Either you budget for it now or it eats your lunch later.
On a personal level, if we had not had insurance to pick up the tab we'd be back in a one bedroom apartment on the poor side of town and I'd be trying to scratch up the cash to file bankruptcy-it's that simple and obvious.
As a country we've come to the end of our road in this process.
Nobody on earth can afford more health care than two aspirins. Every graduate from a third rate medical school in Guadalajara thinks they're entitled to $300k a year to start, and they won't settle for less.
Up to this point they've been able to charge whatever they wanted. But we're up against being able to pay for it. The medical people thought they could charge whatever they wanted, the insurance companies went along with it because they knew they could always soak the employers, and they all use med mal cases as their whipping boy to divert the attention of the lumpen proles when the dollar amount that med mal yields is so small as to be ridiculous.
Do y'know that there has only been one med mal judgment in Iowa that went over a million, and it was reversed?
Thing is, now, the employers are getting tapped out-courtesy of the insurance companies- and they also know that they can dump the benefits as easily as they dumped defined benefit pension plans for "fund your own retirement. Buy stocks and you'll all be rich."
So OK. "Be a contractor and get 1099s-figure out your own salvation."
Those who are fortunate enough to have good health care benefits are a dying breed-and they're scared to death that somebody's going to take it from them. In retrospect they were easy prey for right wing scaremongers.
The rest of us are the walking dead only in the main we're too stupid to realize it.
The wheels are coming off this project and it'll bankrupt the government in a few years if left unaddressed.
That's the reality-it's far worse than I supposed until I got a little taste of it.
It's interesting to note that the American Medical Association supports the administration's health care reform efforts. They figure that it's something they can work with and improve.
Obviously if your employer provides good insurance you're sitting pretty, but remember Danny Bogart's First Law of Insurance: Insurance companies are not there to pay claims.
Had we not had insurance, the prevention would not have been in place and she'd have ended up at Broadlawns for a double mastectomy in a couple of years and no good chance that it'd fix the problem, all courtesy of the taxpayer. It's really no different than preventive maintenance on your car. Either you budget for it now or it eats your lunch later.
On a personal level, if we had not had insurance to pick up the tab we'd be back in a one bedroom apartment on the poor side of town and I'd be trying to scratch up the cash to file bankruptcy-it's that simple and obvious.
As a country we've come to the end of our road in this process.
Nobody on earth can afford more health care than two aspirins. Every graduate from a third rate medical school in Guadalajara thinks they're entitled to $300k a year to start, and they won't settle for less.
Up to this point they've been able to charge whatever they wanted. But we're up against being able to pay for it. The medical people thought they could charge whatever they wanted, the insurance companies went along with it because they knew they could always soak the employers, and they all use med mal cases as their whipping boy to divert the attention of the lumpen proles when the dollar amount that med mal yields is so small as to be ridiculous.
Do y'know that there has only been one med mal judgment in Iowa that went over a million, and it was reversed?
Thing is, now, the employers are getting tapped out-courtesy of the insurance companies- and they also know that they can dump the benefits as easily as they dumped defined benefit pension plans for "fund your own retirement. Buy stocks and you'll all be rich."
So OK. "Be a contractor and get 1099s-figure out your own salvation."
Those who are fortunate enough to have good health care benefits are a dying breed-and they're scared to death that somebody's going to take it from them. In retrospect they were easy prey for right wing scaremongers.
The rest of us are the walking dead only in the main we're too stupid to realize it.
The wheels are coming off this project and it'll bankrupt the government in a few years if left unaddressed.
That's the reality-it's far worse than I supposed until I got a little taste of it.
posted by Robert Luedeman semi retired attorney and amp mechanic @ 6:17 AM
1 comments
1 Comments:
well said
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