5 Freedoms You'd Lose in Health Care Reform

[MNCouple 3]

It's a very touchy subject and one that I tend to be on two minds about. First, I'm licensed to sell Health/Life & Accident Insurance, so I'm familiar with the types of different insurance policies that exist. Medicine is expensive, especially with major biotech industry owning the patents and driving up costs on brand name medications. I also work in a hospital and have done so before. In New Mexico, we had a high population of indigent... those people who didn't have insurance or couldn't afford care.

I think the government is trying to come in on a mid-floor when there is crisis on the top floor and bottom floor. Those Americans who have insurance through employers, or who are using those "self-insure" providers, are going to be more satisfied than those Americans who have no insurance coverage. In my own case, I suffer from migraines and have since I was 12. I can't tell you how many ER visits, neurological appointments and extremely expensive medications I have been on since then. If I had to pay for them all out of pocket, I can guarantee that I'd not have had everything I've had. Insurance has given me the ability to care for myself and maintain the quality of lifestyle I want, and keep it reasonable.

Most major medical plans have a deductible and then go to an 80/20 or 70/30 split. Some of them have plans that will cover a set amount of preventative, but not all insurance plans are created equal. Some cover everything, and some will still cost the insured thousands of dollars out of pocket each year.

I can only share my opinion, but I'd rather the government choose to be "in" or be "out". Not a middle ground. And if they are "in" they should look at regulating the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. Offer more grants for research and development but include caps and max's on what gets rolled out to the public. If they look at ways they can help the "medical" industry better regulate standard operating procedures, that might be a good place to start.

Or, develop a program like Medicare/Medicaid but have it tailored toward those Americans that are ineligible for employer or self-sponsored plans. Have this be offered to those who don't have another option. I'd much rather see this, than have a barrel tossed over all of us that has tons of ramifications for our medical/health economy. Instead of using all that cash to rebuild an entire system... use it to develop a program that will fit the need of those who need it.

Personally, I don't need what the government is offering and I don't want it. However, I also don't like to see people suffering and not getting the care they need or want. If there were a program designed for them tailored and focused on their need... (not our welfare program and not medicaid/medicare - but something else).

I don't know. It's not an easy solution, but I'm very leery about giving the government too much power when they seem to just be experts at messing things up these last few dozen years. I'll admit that I don't have a lot of confidence in their ability to handle something on a scale like this.

[Nikita2Charles 32]

It's more common than people thought!

Insurers Revoke Policies To Avoid Paying High Costs

Just a few days before her scheduled mastectomy, Robin Beaton's insurance company retroactively canceled her policy because she had failed to inform them of her history of acne and a rapid heartbeat. Courtesy Rep. Joe Barton

Just a few days before her scheduled mastectomy, Robin Beaton's insurance company retroactively canceled her policy because she had failed to inform them of her history of acne and a rapid heartbeat.

Courtesy Rep. Joe Barton

When Otto Raddatz, shown here with his wife, was diagnosed with lymphoma, his health insurer rescinded his policy because of a pre-existing condition he was not aware of. His sister Peggy Raddatz testified on his behalf to a congressional committee. Courtesy Peggy Raddatz

text sizeAAAJune 22, 2009

According to a new report by congressional investigators, an insurance company practice of retroactively canceling health insurance is fairly common, and it saves insurers a lot of money.

A subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a hearing about the report's findings in an effort to bring a halt to this practice. But at the hearing, insurance executives told lawmakers they have no plans to stop rescinding policies.

The act of retroactively canceling insurance is called rescission. It happens with individual health insurance policies, where people apply for insurance on their own, not through their employers. Their application generally includes a questionnaire about their health.

The process begins after a policyholder has been diagnosed with an expensive condition such as cancer. The insurer then reviews the health status information in the questionnaire, and if anything is missing, the policy may be rescinded.

The omission from the application may be deliberate, to hide a health condition that might have made the applicant ineligible for insurance. But sometimes there's an innocent explanation: The policyholder may not have known about a health condition, or may not have thought it was relevant.

The rescissions based on omissions or immaterial conditions incensed many lawmakers.

"I think it's shocking, it's inexcusable. It's a system that we have in place and we've got to stop," Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said at the hearing.

From the other side of the aisle, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) was also appalled.

"Doesn't it bother you to do this?" he asked Don Hamm, CEO of Assurant Health, who appeared with the CEOs of UnitedHealth's Golden Rule Insurance Co. and WellPoint's Consumer Business.

Losing Insurance At A Critical Time

Hamm's insurance company rescinded the policy of Otto Raddatz after he was diagnosed with lymphoma. Raddatz had not told the company about a CT scan by a now-retired doctor that showed gallstones and a weakened blood vessel.

That's because he didn't know about the findings, his sister Peggy Raddatz, an attorney, testified. She spent weeks on the phone and ended up at the Illinois Attorney General's office, which began an investigation. The retired doctor turned out to be off on a fishing trip.

"Luckily, they were able to find the doctor, who was able to say, 'Yes, I never discussed those issues with him; they were very minor,' " Raddatz testifed.

After Minor Misunderstanding, A Policy Revoked

One of Barton's constituents, Robin Beaton of Waxahachie, Texas, did know that her health history included acne and a rapid heartbeat. But she didn't think they were relevant to her current health and left them off her application.

After she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was scheduled for a double mastectomy, her insurer cancelled her policy, leaving her devastated.

"I had to completely refocus on what to do, where to turn, because my insurance canceled me," she said. Beaton called Barton's office, which started a series of phone calls to her insurer. It took a call from Barton himself to get her reinstated.

Committee investigators found a total of 19,776 rescissions from three large insurers over five years. The rescissions saved the insurers $300 million.

Insurers Say They Won't Change Rescission Practice

During the hearing, Barton asked Hamm how he felt hearing the three cases of people who'd been burned by rescission.

"I have to say I felt really bad," Hamm replied.

"It's my hope there will be changes made that this will no longer be necessary," he said. His hope, and that of the other insurance company CEOs who testified, is that a health care overhaul will mean that everyone has insurance. If that were the case, people couldn't wait until they got sick to apply, and insurers wouldn't have to worry about whether someone had lied on an application.

Several lawmakers at the hearing suggested there were things the companies could do right now: They could vet applications when they receive them, rather than waiting until people get sick; they could consider whether something that was omitted was related to a current health condition before rescinding; and they could be more careful to positively identify fraud before rescinding a policy.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who chaired the hearing, asked all three CEOs if they would agree to stop rescinding policies except in cases of fraud.

All three said no.

If they don't do something to stop it, said Barton of Texas, Congress will.

[Nikita2Charles 32]

Read the story

http://www.startribune.com/business/11213701.html

How back in 2006, The CEO of united health care was defending his $1billion compensation package, while Every year my premium keep going up,

WHAT OTHER CHOICE DO I HAVE< WHAT OTHER CHOICES THE COMPANY HAVE?

United CEO says he'll take no more stock options

William McGuire of UnitedHealth Group has accumulated $1.6 billion in stock options; now he says the company practice will end

UnitedHealth Group Inc. CEO Dr. William McGuire has accumulated stock options worth an estimated $1.6 billion. On Tuesday, he acknowledged that might be enough.

Under fire for compensation practices that have made him one of the wealthiest executives in the country, McGuire said he will recommend that he and about a dozen other top United executives forgo new stock awards "for the foreseeable future."

McGuire long has been a lightning rod in the debate over executive compensation, particularly with health care costs rising so rapidly and the ranks of the uninsured growing.

"It's a shocking wealth transfer," said Nell Minow, editor of the Corporate Library, an organization in Portland, Maine, that analyzes corporate compensation and governance issues.

Earlier this year, McGuire cashed out options worth $124 million, and in 2004 he was the highest-paid executive in Minnesota, with total compensation of almost $125 million.

Company officials have defended those paydays by pointing to McGuire's success in transforming United from a financially ailing insurer into the second-largest in the country. The company also is a Wall Street darling; its stock price has climbed more than 200 percent in the past five years.

McGuire emphasized Tuesday that in his opinion, stock options were appropriately awarded to him and other executives according to company policy, which until last year allowed the option price to be established in periods when the company's stock was in a dip or before a sharp run-up.

"To my knowledge, every member of management is believed to have followed appropriate practices and were within [company] guidelines," McGuire told analysts. "We sleep with good conscience."

McGuire also has become a major financial giver in the Twin Cities and elsewhere. His family foundation dispensed almost $5 million in 2004 and recently pledged $5 million for a new riverfront park in downtown Minneapolis and $10 million to help pay for the college education of low-income public school students in Minnesota.

Timing of options questioned

Stock options are designed to reward executives for good performance as reflected in a company's stock value. Presumably, the better a company performs, the higher its stock shares will go and executives will benefit when they sell the lower-priced options for the higher market price.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) reportedly is looking into whether United and other companies allowed executives to backdate their stock options, thus ensuring a bigger profit when those options were sold. The question of the timing in McGuire's case was first raised in a Wall Street Journal story in March.

United has confirmed that until 2005, McGuire was allowed to select the date for his options. The company recently informed regulators that it also is conducting an internal review -- done by an independent committee consisting of nonemployee board members and outside legal counsel -- of some of its compensation practices.

Minow said the board most likely would be liable if anything inappropriate turns up. "In this case, if you believe there was a mistake, the clear thing to do is act very quickly and stop it and start over as you cooperate with the feds," she said.

The 2.3 million shares McGuire sold in February at $59 a share were optioned to him at $5 a share. The SEC filing reflecting the sale did not say when the option was set.

UnitedHealth's board is expected to consider the freeze on future option awards at its next meeting in May.

McGuire's comments Tuesday were his first public remarks about the options issue. He told analysts: "It's been very difficult to respond to reports that impugn motive. As soon as we were aware of a concern, we commenced a thorough review of our practices. We take these concerns seriously."

Goes to airwaves

McGuire also took his message to the airwaves, and he went on CNBC's "Street Signs" to discuss the company's profitable first quarter and address the compensation issue.

"I and a lot of other people at the company are very fortunate to have been part of a company that started almost as a bankrupt company and has prospered," he said on CNBC. "We're going to consider terminating or slowing down stock options for our most senior employees, and I'm one of those. We don't need to give any more. We're very attentive to the wishes of our constituency, which includes shareholders and customers."

Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch said late Tuesday that his office will attempt to intervene in a shareholders lawsuit that was filed against UnitedHealth over the options issue; it was filed in federal court in Minneapolis late last month.

"We've gotten a ton of calls on this," Hatch said. "We don't know if anything is wrong; we just think as a matter of public policy we want to know what's going on."

At UnitedHealth, forgoing future options still will leave top executives with sizable holdings.

At the end of 2005, McGuire's exercisable options totaled $1.6 billion, according to a proxy statement filed by the company with the SEC on April 7. Stephen Hemsley, president and chief operating officer of the Minnetonka-based health care organization, holds exercisable options of nearly $663 million. Two other executives have options worth $50 million to $60 million.

The announcement about executive compensation came on the same day that United raised its 2006 earnings estimate to a range of $2.88 to $2.92 a share, from a previous forecast of $2.85 to $2.90 a share. But United's stock price lost $2, or almost 4 percent, Tuesday, and at $49.67 is down about 12.4 percent since questions first were raised about the timing of executive options.

Edited July 30, 2009 by Nikita2Charles

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

It's more common than people thought!

Insurers Revoke Policies To Avoid Paying High Costs

Just a few days before her scheduled mastectomy, Robin Beaton's insurance company retroactively canceled her policy because she had failed to inform them of her history of acne and a rapid heartbeat. Courtesy Rep. Joe Barton

Just a few days before her scheduled mastectomy, Robin Beaton's insurance company retroactively canceled her policy because she had failed to inform them of her history of acne and a rapid heartbeat.

Courtesy Rep. Joe Barton

When Otto Raddatz, shown here with his wife, was diagnosed with lymphoma, his health insurer rescinded his policy because of a pre-existing condition he was not aware of. His sister Peggy Raddatz testified on his behalf to a congressional committee. Courtesy Peggy Raddatz

text sizeAAAJune 22, 2009

According to a new report by congressional investigators, an insurance company practice of retroactively canceling health insurance is fairly common, and it saves insurers a lot of money.

A subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a hearing about the report's findings in an effort to bring a halt to this practice. But at the hearing, insurance executives told lawmakers they have no plans to stop rescinding policies.

The act of retroactively canceling insurance is called rescission. It happens with individual health insurance policies, where people apply for insurance on their own, not through their employers. Their application generally includes a questionnaire about their health.

The process begins after a policyholder has been diagnosed with an expensive condition such as cancer. The insurer then reviews the health status information in the questionnaire, and if anything is missing, the policy may be rescinded.

The omission from the application may be deliberate, to hide a health condition that might have made the applicant ineligible for insurance. But sometimes there's an innocent explanation: The policyholder may not have known about a health condition, or may not have thought it was relevant.

The rescissions based on omissions or immaterial conditions incensed many lawmakers.

"I think it's shocking, it's inexcusable. It's a system that we have in place and we've got to stop," Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) said at the hearing.

From the other side of the aisle, Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) was also appalled.

"Doesn't it bother you to do this?" he asked Don Hamm, CEO of Assurant Health, who appeared with the CEOs of UnitedHealth's Golden Rule Insurance Co. and WellPoint's Consumer Business.

Losing Insurance At A Critical Time

Hamm's insurance company rescinded the policy of Otto Raddatz after he was diagnosed with lymphoma. Raddatz had not told the company about a CT scan by a now-retired doctor that showed gallstones and a weakened blood vessel.

That's because he didn't know about the findings, his sister Peggy Raddatz, an attorney, testified. She spent weeks on the phone and ended up at the Illinois Attorney General's office, which began an investigation. The retired doctor turned out to be off on a fishing trip.

"Luckily, they were able to find the doctor, who was able to say, 'Yes, I never discussed those issues with him; they were very minor,' " Raddatz testifed.

After Minor Misunderstanding, A Policy Revoked

One of Barton's constituents, Robin Beaton of Waxahachie, Texas, did know that her health history included acne and a rapid heartbeat. But she didn't think they were relevant to her current health and left them off her application.

After she was diagnosed with breast cancer and was scheduled for a double mastectomy, her insurer cancelled her policy, leaving her devastated.

"I had to completely refocus on what to do, where to turn, because my insurance canceled me," she said. Beaton called Barton's office, which started a series of phone calls to her insurer. It took a call from Barton himself to get her reinstated.

Committee investigators found a total of 19,776 rescissions from three large insurers over five years. The rescissions saved the insurers $300 million.

Insurers Say They Won't Change Rescission Practice

During the hearing, Barton asked Hamm how he felt hearing the three cases of people who'd been burned by rescission.

"I have to say I felt really bad," Hamm replied.

"It's my hope there will be changes made that this will no longer be necessary," he said. His hope, and that of the other insurance company CEOs who testified, is that a health care overhaul will mean that everyone has insurance. If that were the case, people couldn't wait until they got sick to apply, and insurers wouldn't have to worry about whether someone had lied on an application.

Several lawmakers at the hearing suggested there were things the companies could do right now: They could vet applications when they receive them, rather than waiting until people get sick; they could consider whether something that was omitted was related to a current health condition before rescinding; and they could be more careful to positively identify fraud before rescinding a policy.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), who chaired the hearing, asked all three CEOs if they would agree to stop rescinding policies except in cases of fraud.

All three said no.

If they don't do something to stop it, said Barton of Texas, Congress will.

I have heard of that - they look for something in your medical record to prove that your current problem was pre-existing.

In my case I had a bout of high blood pressure last year for being 10lbs overweight - its back to normal now, but presumably if I get heart disease at some point in the future, this could be used as a reason to disqualify me from coverage.

[aidan80 9]

5 Freedoms You'd Lose in Health Care Reform

by Shawn Tully

Monday, July 27, 2009

If you read the fine print in the Congressional plans, you'll find that a lot of cherished aspects of the current system would disappear.

In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.

A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.

If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.

Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:

1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan

The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through "qualified" plans offered by health-care "exchanges" that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can't really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.

Today, many states require these "standard benefits packages" -- and they're a major cause for the rise in health-care costs. Every group, from chiropractors to alcohol-abuse counselors, do lobbying to get included. Connecticut, for example, requires reimbursement for hair transplants, hearing aids, and in vitro fertilization.

The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure "children" until the age of 26. That's just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn't even know what's in their plans and what they're required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.

2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs

As with the previous example, the Obama plan enshrines into federal law one of the worst features of state legislation: community rating. Eleven states, ranging from New York to Oregon, have some form of community rating. In its purest form, community rating requires that all patients pay the same rates for their level of coverage regardless of their age or medical condition.

Americans with pre-existing conditions need subsidies under any plan, but community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care. The reason is twofold: First, it forces young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers, to pay far more than their actual cost, and gives older workers, who can afford to pay more, a big discount. The state laws gouging the young are a major reason so many of them have joined the ranks of uninsured.

Under the Senate plan, insurers would be barred from charging any more than twice as much for one patient vs. any other patient with the same coverage. So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000.

Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Again, that's understandable for folks with diabetes or cancer. But the bills would bar rewarding people who pursue a healthy lifestyle of exercise or a cholesterol-conscious diet. That's hardly a formula for lower costs. It's as if car insurers had to charge the same rates to safe drivers as to chronic speeders with a history of accidents.

3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage

The bills threaten to eliminate the one part of the market truly driven by consumers spending their own money. That's what makes a market, and health care needs more of it, not less.

Hundreds of companies now offer Health Savings Accounts to about 5 million employees. Those workers deposit tax-free money in the accounts and get a matching contribution from their employer. They can use the funds to buy a high-deductible plan -- say for major medical costs over $12,000. Preventive care is reimbursed, but patients pay all other routine doctor visits and tests with their own money from the HSA account. As a result, HSA users are far more cost-conscious than customers who are reimbursed for the majority of their care.

The bills seriously endanger the trend toward consumer-driven care in general. By requiring minimum packages, they would prevent patients from choosing stripped-down plans that cover only major medical expenses. "The government could set extremely low deductibles that would eliminate HSAs," says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market research group. "And they could do it after the bills are passed."

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan

This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It's worth diving into the weeds -- the territory where most pundits and politicians don't seem to have ventured.

The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don't have real insurance. Those are the GEs and Time Warners and most other big companies.

The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are "grandfathered." Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want -- they're exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.

But read on.

The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the "qualified" policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we've already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, "keeping your own plan" has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange. As we'll see, it could happen a lot earlier.

The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren't under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only "qualified" plans to new customers, via the exchanges.

The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there's a catch. If the plan changes in any way -- by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug -- the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.

5. Freedom to choose your doctors

The Senate bill requires that Americans buying through the exchanges -- and as we've seen, that will soon be most Americans -- must get their care through something called "medical home." Medical home is similar to an HMO. You're assigned a primary care doctor, and the doctor controls your access to specialists. The primary care physicians will decide which services, like MRIs and other diagnostic scans, are best for you, and will decide when you really need to see a cardiologists or orthopedists.

Under the proposals, the gatekeepers would theoretically guide patients to tests and treatments that have proved most cost-effective. The danger is that doctors will be financially rewarded for denying care, as were HMO physicians more than a decade ago. It was consumer outrage over despotic gatekeepers that made the HMOs so unpopular, and killed what was billed as the solution to America's health-care cost explosion.

The bills do not specifically rule out fee-for-service plans as options to be offered through the exchanges. But remember, those plans -- if they exist -- would be barred from charging sick or elderly patients more than young and healthy ones. So patients would be inclined to game the system, staying in the HMO while they're healthy and switching to fee-for-service when they become seriously ill. "That would kill fee-for-service in a hurry," says Goodman.

In reality, the flexible, employer-based plans that now dominate the landscape, and that Americans so cherish, could disappear far faster than the 5 year "grace period" that's barely being discussed.

Companies would have the option of paying an 8% payroll tax into a fund that pays for coverage for Americans who aren't covered by their employers. It won't happen right away -- large companies must wait a couple of years before they opt out. But it will happen, since it's likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they'll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.

The best solution is to move to a let-freedom-ring regime of high deductibles, no community rating, no standard benefits, and cross-state shopping for bargains (another market-based reform that's strictly taboo in the bills). I'll propose my own solution in another piece soon on Fortune.com. For now, we suffer with a flawed health-care system, but we still have our Five Freedoms. Call them the Five Endangered Freedoms.

http://finance.yahoo.com/insurance/article...nsurance-health

You forgot number 6... Freedom for the insurance companies to charge us 4x the rate to add 1 extra person to our plan... because 1 person is single that pays around $60 per month but 2 are all of a sudden a family so they pay $240? Lots of options there nice of course we could blame the employer but I prefer to blame the insurance company and the greedy hospitals. It'd work a whole lot better if heath care was nationalized and run from the top down we all pay we all use it no exceptions or if you really want to pay out your ####### go private pay the extra because those poor doctors really need that 2nd house or that new boat and that nice sports car? But people moan about the costs of real healthcare but our taxes are being pished into the gutter by the many levels of government in this place? Talk about big government how about all the small governments all eating up every penny we have to do what for us? Sweet Fuk All is what they are doing!

Steamline government, run it centrally top down take out the bottom feeders, run the whole thing from state level and leave only the county governments to run each of the counties allowing the bigger cities to handle their own affairs. Run heath, education, police, fire, ems, courts, jails..etc all from the state. efficiency is what lacks here it's really annoying that we're all paying for all these mini governments to micro manage nothing for us. How bout putting the government to work, working for the people who got off their arses to vote those lazy politicians into office.

[luckytxn 2,264]

Wow. If we did all that then it isn't Socialism and the Dems would be out. Think again.

[Mark&Steph 0]

1. Freedom to choose what's in my plan. Wait...what? I can? I've never been able to do that.

2. Reward for healthy living. No, my plan does not have this. There's no such thing as preventive care either. If you don't need it, they don't want to pay for it.

5. Yes, I can pick whatever doctor I want. As long as they are on the preapproved list, of course. If they aren't, I'm screwed. I've noticed lately that doctors are being dropped all the time from our insurance's approved provider list.

Don't get me wrong, my insurance has been pretty decent so far. Of course, I've never had a major illness or surgery and I'm sure because I have employer provided insurance is the reason why it's so limited. But then again, if I didn't have employer provided insurance, I wouldn't have it all. I could never afford it on my own. My husband and I together are over $800 a month.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

1. Freedom to choose what's in my plan. Wait...what? I can? I've never been able to do that.

2. Reward for healthy living. No, my plan does not have this. There's no such thing as preventive care either. If you don't need it, they don't want to pay for it.

5. Yes, I can pick whatever doctor I want. As long as they are on the preapproved list, of course. If they aren't, I'm screwed. I've noticed lately that doctors are being dropped all the time from our insurance's approved provider list.

Don't get me wrong, my insurance has been pretty decent so far. Of course, I've never had a major illness or surgery and I'm sure because I have employer provided insurance is the reason why it's so limited. But then again, if I didn't have employer provided insurance, I wouldn't have it all. I could never afford it on my own. My husband and I together are over $800 a month.

$800.00/month in premiums? Is your employer contributing to your plan as well?

[Mark&Steph 0]

$800.00/month in premiums? Is your employer contributing to your plan as well?

She pays it all. Thank god.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

That's one of the few perks about my current job - the health insurance is actually very cheap. Premium is about $250/month - of course we haven't had to rely on it for anything serious yet...

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

$800.00/month in premiums? Is your employer contributing to your plan as well?

She pays it all. Thank god.

We're at about 1K/month of which my employer pays 70%. Our coverage carries a 500/1000 deductible, though, and is 90/10 after that with common preventive care covered at 100% w/o deductibles. Not too bad a plan but it used to be much better and less expensive.