I've never had a problem with COBRA and I've never had to spend a lot of money to keep coverage after losing a job.

What maybe not a lot of money to you can and probably is a fortune to another.

A man goes to work doing what he loves. It doesn't pay a fortune, but it's enough to keep a roof over his head, the family fed, the car running and even get some medical insurance out of the deal.

Through no fault of his own he finds himself out of a job. By your logic he goes from hard-working tax paying American to lazy good for nothing puke who's kids can just up and die for all you care?

Maybe by your reckoning he shouldn't have been buying shit he didn't need when he was employed huh? Like a car (there's buses) that roof patch (put a bucket under it) or that 29in. picture-tube type color T.V. with the fancy rabbit ears (12in b/w with tinfoil will do). Those kids didn't NEED new shoes, they could have gone to the goodwill and got used ones (or ran bare-footed). Yup their fault for buying all those things they didn't need.


Also I don't believe you addressed my concern (forgive if you did and I missed it) that I don't want my tax dollars paying for their fukin' kids education. You want NO healthcare for those who cannot pay for it themselves (no tax cost to you) yet support tax costs to fund other lazy good for nothing pukes vaginal factory kids educations? What is the differance? Before you say overall societal benefit comes from public supported education I must ask, do you honestly believe there is no overall societal benefit to be had from a publicly supported healthy population?

Did you, DLF, go to a private school growing up or did you go thru a tax supported public education system?

I'm not a huge fan of the public school system. There are a lot of flaws in it and we are taxed heavily here for it, but if it weren't for the public school system my son would not be getting any kind of education. Not because we can't afford private schools, but because there are no private schools, in this area anyway, that have any inkling on how to educate a student with Asperger Syndrome and they don't want to know. Public schools do have programs and people with training to help educate these kids. If public schools can help where private schools can't, maybe it will be the same with public health care vs. private for profit health care. If there was no profit in health care people who have a jobs and insurance wouldn't be going bankrupt because of an illness or injury. People who have jobs and insurance are losing their homes and going bankrupt, not because they are lazy Americans, but because they work hard and have private health insurance. That is the real problem, not people abusing welfare, but people who work hard only in the end to lose everything because of corporate greed.

You know there is a cap on our medical insurance benefits. Our lifetime benefit is $1,000,000.00. That is for the whole family. Once that amount is reached no more benefits, period. I know it sounds like a lot of money, but one serious accedent or illness will eat that up. Does this sound as wrong to anyone else as it does to me?

(August 24, 2009 at 6:44 pm)binny Wrote: You know there is a cap on our medical insurance benefits. Our lifetime benefit is $1,000,000.00. That is for the whole family. Once that amount is reached no more benefits, period. I know it sounds like a lot of money, but one serious accedent or illness will eat that up. Does this sound as wrong to anyone else as it does to me?

It's sounds wrong to me too. As you say an expensive treatment of some sort would eat that up. Specially if there is need of treating cancer something like that. To get treated and getting a surgery should be free, since it's a matter of saving someones life. A hospital or doctor shouldn't be motivated by money.

By the way, there's no private school in Sweden. Not between kindergarden and up to 9th grade. Then after that is there some private high schools, but they've been critized to have lower demands then regular school ( meaning public).

Also going to college in Sweden is pretty much free. The only cost is buying books and renting an aprtment (if needed) but there is not payment that you have to make to the schools. All universities and bigger colleges is owned by the state. Or at least financed by the goverment. Which means a poor guy could become a doctor without having to spend much money on the education. Plus he gets money from the state to fund his expencive for school materials.

But this system isn't perfect, of course no system is. But it has few flaws and is more fair then having private schools, healthcare and so on.

Quote:I've never had a problem with COBRA and I've never had to spend a lot of money to keep coverage after losing a job.

Then you truly never had dealings with "Cobra" that the majority have.

1. Costly/unequal in comparison to coverage
2. Premium changes without notifications
3. Coverage changes without notifications
4. Cancellations without notifications
5. Guidelines changing constantly
6. Fraudulent claims history
7. Undefined ledgers on pre/pro existing cases


Cobra is a joke plain and simple.......

(August 23, 2009 at 4:01 pm)dry land fish Wrote: I can support an effort to control how much people can charge for procedures.

Earlier:

(August 20, 2009 at 8:49 pm)dry land fish Wrote: The government has a job to protect the citizens from foreign invaders. That's it.

So you're a hardcore libertarian but you support blatant market manipulation?

I think you've talked yourself into a corner and you don't know what you're defending anymore.

(August 23, 2009 at 10:56 pm)dry land fish Wrote: I'm not trying to be an A hole but I'm being realistic. America can not have a completely free health care system. It won't work. I have had this discussion with many Americans. My co workers, hair dresser, old men at the mom and pop coffee spots, my family, and my friends all are against a completely free healthcare system. Those people range in all different ages and political parties. Some even are religious and we all agree on this one thing. We want to fix the system...but we don't trust our federal or state governments enough to put our healthcare into their hands.

Don't pretend you know what the general public wants when you talk to a few of your deep south friends. Actual polls show that the american people don't hold the views you claim they do.

(August 21, 2009 at 6:17 pm)dry land fish Wrote: Most poor people made bad decisions. They more than likely never finished high school or only have a high school educaton. That's irresponsible. It's their choice to continue their education or not to continue their education.
...
People can't make a living on checking out goods at Wal Mart. Even managers make around thirty thousand a year. What is anyone going to buy on thirty grand a year?

Let's imagine for a moment that every American citizen has a High School education and some post-secondary. Do you think that will somehow enable businesses to pay them more and there will be no lower class? Are you retarded?

Quote:Most poor people made bad decisions. They more than likely never finished high school or only have a high school educaton. That's irresponsible. It's their choice to continue their education or not to continue their education.
...
People can't make a living on checking out goods at Wal Mart. Even managers make around thirty thousand a year. What is anyone going to buy on thirty grand a year?

You have to be joking???, No one is this ignorant or naive..(except for the religious of course).....

I honestly don't even know how to respond to this.....Truly unbelievable....

(August 24, 2009 at 5:52 pm)Dotard Wrote: What maybe not a lot of money to you can and probably is a fortune to another.

A man goes to work doing what he loves. It doesn't pay a fortune, but it's enough to keep a roof over his head, the family fed, the car running and even get some medical insurance out of the deal.

Through no fault of his own he finds himself out of a job. By your logic he goes from hard-working tax paying American to lazy good for nothing puke who's kids can just up and die for all you care?

Maybe by your reckoning he shouldn't have been buying shit he didn't need when he was employed huh? Like a car (there's buses) that roof patch (put a bucket under it) or that 29in. picture-tube type color T.V. with the fancy rabbit ears (12in b/w with tinfoil will do). Those kids didn't NEED new shoes, they could have gone to the goodwill and got used ones (or ran bare-footed). Yup their fault for buying all those things they didn't need.


Also I don't believe you addressed my concern (forgive if you did and I missed it) that I don't want my tax dollars paying for their fukin' kids education. You want NO healthcare for those who cannot pay for it themselves (no tax cost to you) yet support tax costs to fund other lazy good for nothing pukes vaginal factory kids educations? What is the differance? Before you say overall societal benefit comes from public supported education I must ask, do you honestly believe there is no overall societal benefit to be had from a publicly supported healthy population?

Did you, DLF, go to a private school growing up or did you go thru a tax supported public education system?

What you pay for COBRA goes by what it cost you to have that same insurance plan with your employer. You pay what you were paying before and sometimes a little more. I answered your question. People who just find themselves out of a job get unemployment insurance and depending on how long they worked and how much they made depends on how long they can be on it. Sometimes people can even live off of their unemployment check enough to pay bills and buy food until they find another job. Unemployment is great because it's not a handout. The employer pays unemployment insurance by law so that if their employees are laid off or fired they have something to fall back on.

I NEVER said I didn't want my money to pay for education. I want people to be educated because education = a good job and people who have a good career are usually able to afford a private health care plan and are able to help support the economy. There is no societal benefit from giving people something as expensive as a health insurance plan for free. Health care costs too much for the American taxpayers to provide for everyone. We are in a recession...we have an extreme amount of people not paying taxes. We can not afford to do this! Back when our economy was up and everyone had a job and was making money then maybe something like this could have worked. Then again most of what we Americans thought was prosperity was just really cloaked by people living above their means and putting it on their credit cards. When people realized that they had a hundred thousand dollars of credit card debt...then the economy started failing. Once you default on a car loan and three or four credit cards you can't get any more credit. When the American people stopped being able to get a credit card then they stopped buying things...then people lost jobs....and you see where we are today. We don't have the economy we once had and we can't start a program that costs billions at a time like this. It would be great to just give health care to any and everyone...it's not possible right now. If we want the American economy to just commit suicide then by all means go right ahead and line everyone up for free healthcare and free cancer care and lets see how long it takes us to go completely broke.

I went to a publicly funded county high school. The only private school close to my home had a huge African American population and always had problems with white on black crime and black on white crime. Still today there are a lot of reports of white girls getting sexually harassed by the black students and when a white student doesn't want to date a Black male then they try to call them a racist and someone usually physically assaults them. My parents wouldn't have sent me to a school that had that much animosity amongst their students. It is not a good learning environment. Otherwise...I'd have probably went there because the classes were smaller which means more personal attention.

DLF,
You imply that you maybe would have supported universal healthcare when times were better. The history is though that every democrat that has tried to bring it in has been defeated by a combination of the republicans and the vested interests, doctors,insurers etc. ( plus a less-than-determined democratic party machine ). Maybe a pandemic causing the uninsured to be dying in their thousands on the streets of your great cities causing further disease and death is what is required to facilitate the change.
Would such a spectacle change your mind?

(August 25, 2009 at 7:45 pm)dry land fish Wrote: What you pay for COBRA goes by what it cost you to have that same insurance plan with your employer. You pay what you were paying before and sometimes a little more. I answered your question. People who just find themselves out of a job get unemployment insurance and depending on how long they worked and how much they made depends on how long they can be on it. Sometimes people can even live off of their unemployment check enough to pay bills and buy food until they find another job. Unemployment is great because it's not a handout. The employer pays unemployment insurance by law so that if their employees are laid off or fired they have something to fall back on.

My good friend just got fired from her job. She works through a temp agency based in Boston so she has to have Health Insurance and they can't discriminate against her pre-conditions. This past Friday she just got fired from her job because they wanted her to switch to a CA based Temp agency and essentially lose her health care. My friend has a lot of health problems, diabetes being one of them. She cannot go without health insurance. She only just got off Cobra and can't afford to go back on because with her problems it's ridiculously expensive. Cobra is a piece of shit, and there are serious issues with our current healthcare when someone can lose their job because the employer wants to avoid paying for insurance.

(August 25, 2009 at 7:45 pm)dry land fish Wrote: I NEVER said I didn't want my money to pay for education. I want people to be educated because education = a good job and people who have a good career are usually able to afford a private health care plan and are able to help support the economy. There is no societal benefit from giving people something as expensive as a health insurance plan for free. Health care costs too much for the American taxpayers to provide for everyone. We are in a recession...we have an extreme amount of people not paying taxes. We can not afford to do this! Back when our economy was up and everyone had a job and was making money then maybe something like this could have worked. Then again most of what we Americans thought was prosperity was just really cloaked by people living above their means and putting it on their credit cards. When people realized that they had a hundred thousand dollars of credit card debt...then the economy started failing. Once you default on a car loan and three or four credit cards you can't get any more credit. When the American people stopped being able to get a credit card then they stopped buying things...then people lost jobs....and you see where we are today. We don't have the economy we once had and we can't start a program that costs billions at a time like this. It would be great to just give health care to any and everyone...it's not possible right now. If we want the American economy to just commit suicide then by all means go right ahead and line everyone up for free healthcare and free cancer care and lets see how long it takes us to go completely broke.

I think it's disgusting that people argue the health of it's people "costs too much" for us to undertake. Would you say that if your own health depended on a public option? But whatever, you want to go the money route so here we go. What you don't realize is that we are already paying for the uninsured, and it's expensive. Every time someone uninsured gets to sick they go to an ER, they cannot be refused care, and then they don't pay the bill. Guess who eats the cost of that visits? I'll give you a hint, it's not the doctor or the hospital. Paying for health insurance for everyone is substantially better than our current system since we can pay for preventive care and treat a problem before it becomes to big and requires an ER visit, which are super expensive.

Putting forth a public a public option will not only save money in respects to unpaid ER visits, but for people with health insurance. It creates competition that forces other health insurance companies to lower their price.

And let's not forget, if you have health insurance now, you're not all set. Get cancer, and see what happens. The number 1 cause of bankruptcy in America is medical debt, and that's for people with health insurance. When you get a serious illness in this country, your health insurance drops you or won't pay for the really expensive procedures. I'm listening to Keith Olbermann and I just heard a woman crying in a Town Hall talking about her Husband, he has brain damage from an accident and her health insurance won't pay for him to eat and drink. You call that health insurance?

So this healthcare debate is not just about a public option, but to make sure Insurance Companies won't be making billions and billions of dollars at our expense.