Trigger, shmigger...Medicare for preexisting conditions.
Single Payer? HAHAHA...not a chance. We don't do socialism like those free market countries in Europe and Canada.
Public Option? Nope, it ain't happening. Because of course that'll lead to single payer socialism.
What we are going to get is a trigger. One that will never get pulled. Meanwhile people like me, numbering in the millions, are sick with preexisting conditions and affordable health insurance won't be offered to us. We all know how vitally important insurance company profits are. Much more important than the health of people who were 'irresponsible' enough to allow themselves to get sick in the first place, right?
What should be done is allow people with preexisting conditions to enroll in Medicare. If we don't get treatment the costs to treat us, which we will not pay for, it will negate any proposed cost savings in the so-called health care reform, that really is a health care industry giveaway, which is about to be passed.
This society either needs to take care of me, and the millions like me, or we will still destroy the system. The best way to take care of us is let us enroll in Medicare...
Medicare for all sounds good.
3% overhead? Gee, why not? I'm sure the few hundred or so insurance company execs will be as nourished off regular BRIGHT ORANGE fiestaware, as they would be off 24K gold porcelain.
=D
Ya think? Just a different kind of poison.
September 30, 2009 11:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
You know me Bwak...I am an ardent supporter of single payer. I think the US should be like the rest of the industrialized world and provide it to all of the citizens. I think it si immoral that we don't. We let health insurance companies ration it only to people who will make them money.
If those insurance CEO's don't watch it we will crash the system and insted of eating off of Fiestaware they'll be eating with their hands off of paper plates. We will crash the system and then single payer will be the only option. Let us into the Medicare system and the biggest part of our country's health care problems will be solved.
=)
October 1, 2009 12:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
The irony is we treat wards of the state better in terms of providing health care than we do people with preexisting conditions.
October 1, 2009 12:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oops...this is the correct link, disregard the one right above.
October 1, 2009 12:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
Now before anyone goes and says this is a very self interested post, I'll admit it...yes it is.
I am willing to hold myself up as an example. I did make some very bad lifestyle choices. I was sedentary and become very overweight which lead to my disease. And I deserve whatever criticism is hurled my way. I am dealing with the larger ramifications of my actions every day in trying to cope with this disease and I am not looking for sympathy.
Like I said I am all for single payer for all. But if that isn't an option, nor a public plan, the only way to tackle our health care problems is to address people with preexisting conditions who have been denied insurance...dealing effectively with those people, me included, are key to getting health care costs under control sans a public option or single payer system.
October 1, 2009 1:01 AM | Reply | Permalink
Those pre-existings......I hear ya, Libertine. If those of us with the pre-existing conditions are going to continue being effectively shut out by exorbitant premiums, the rest of the population is gonna be saddled with us anyway.
I have a medical condition that is hereditary. It killed my mother when she was 58. It killed my sister when she was 53. I'm 55. New treatment for this condition is effective and would have saved their lives if it had been available then. The cost of this treatment is astronomical. The pitiful insurance policy I am able to afford does not cover this, nor the hospitalization it will require. So, when it comes time for me to have this treatment, am I gonna just lay there and die? Fuck no. I'm going to the hospital, I'm gonna have that treatment, and when I'm all fixed up, I'm walking out of that place and leaving behind a $180,000 stinking pile of debt that there is no way I'll ever be able to repay.
So, who gets to absorb that big stinking pile? The hospital? Sure. Then they raise the prices they charge the insurance companies to cover their losses. Then the insurance companies raise your premiums to cover their losses.
So, Libertine,
"This society either needs to take care of me, and the millions like me, or we will still destroy the system. The best way to take care of us is let us enroll in Medicare."
I couldn't agree more.
October 1, 2009 9:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry to hear about the family history flowerchild.
Yep, if my condition takes a turn for the worse I am going to the hospital, getting treatment which will run in the tens of thousands of dollars, and pay them $10 a month for the rest of my life. If I pay them at least a little they can't come and try to take everything I have.
At some point many of us, no matter how healthy we are at this present time, will life threatening conditions and diseases. And if it happens we should not be denied access to affordable treatment based on the fact that we got sick.
October 1, 2009 9:56 AM | Reply | Permalink
This may interest you . . .
Hey Libertine ... At my Cafe blog . . .
Subsidies Under the Baucus Plan & Subsidy Calculator Link
~OGD~
October 1, 2009 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
I saw it OGD...and rec'd it like I always do with your outstanding posts. Thank you for fighting the good fight you have.
You're right all it amounts to is a HUGE subsidy for the insurance industry. All the Baucus plan, and any plan that doesn't call for at least a public option, does is keep the same rotting/rotten system we have intact.
October 1, 2009 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink