Maybe Republicans should have done something about it when they were in power. Something that wasn't either putting it off or catering to their corporate interests.

The Democrats obstructed the Republican plans.

The Democrats are obstructing Puggs Pelosi Care too.

What plans were those?

HSAs for all.

I thought those were available to anyone who wants to set one up?

I thought those were available to anyone who wants to set one up?

I switched start of last year. Cut my premium in half and got a better tax deduction to work with.

I thought those were available to anyone who wants to set one up?

Here is a little song celebrating our position at #37 in the world in healthcare.

I have one (HSA). It's mostly a hassle. The big problem is that if you don't spend it all during the year the company managing the acct gets to keep the difference. I've lost thousands with that thing over the years. It might actually be useful if the end of year balance amount rolled over from year to year. Unless you are able to accurately guess your medical expenses a year in advance, you end up losing more than you would save in taxes.

Youtube: Paul Hipp, We're number 37!



For a song about health care, it's actually pretty good. Good beat, good lyrics. On the downside, the singer looks like Sylvester Stallone.

If we quit trying to save premies and such we could change our stats pretty quick. Or just lied about stats like the old USSR did and Cuba probably does....

Not to mention the impact of murder rates and such.

Not to mention the impact of murder rates and such.

A million Ed Geins wouldn't equal one Stalin or Mao.

That was for a better society tomorrow.

Nonprofit Groups Upset at Exclusion From Health Bills


By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: September 13, 2009

Nonprofit organizations say they are upset that Congress and the Obama administration have not addressed their rising health care costs in the various health care proposals being floated on Capitol Hill.

The main bill in the House would award a tax credit to small businesses that provide their employees with health insurance — but nonprofits do not pay income taxes and thus would not benefit.

“Why should employees of nonprofits be treated worse than employees of for-profit businesses?” said Jonathan A. Small, government affairs consultant at the Nonprofit Coordinating Committee of New York.

Nonprofit groups were hoping that the president would include them in his speech to Congress on Wednesday, but instead he mentioned only “families, businesses and government.”

“There was nothing in that much-repeated trilogy of those needing help that spoke to nonprofits,” said Lester M. Salamon, director of the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University.

Some nonprofit groups have called for a subsidy along the lines of the Earned Income Tax Credit, in which money would be returned to organizations that demonstrate they have paid for an employee’s health care.

As a group, nonprofit organizations are the nation’s fourth-largest employer. But their advocates say policy makers know little about the workings of nonprofits, which pay payroll taxes and, in rare instances, taxes on unrelated business activities, but are exempt from taxes on their income.

Life ain't fair. I've gotten screwed over by the tax credit deal too, but the alternative is pay more taxes then get a credit, maybe.

I don't have much sympathy for their plight. Not for profits get tax subsidies in the form of tax deductible contributions from donors. Not to mention not paying taxes on income from sheltered activities, which frequently pay pretty good salaries to mangers and employees. Take not for profit hospitals, for example.

Later in his speech, the president used Alabama to buttress his call for a government insurer to enhance competition in health insurance. He asserted that 90% of the Alabama health-insurance market is controlled by one insurer, and that high market concentration "makes it easier for insurance companies to treat their customers badly—by cherry-picking the healthiest individuals and trying to drop the sickest; by overcharging small businesses who have no leverage; and by jacking up rates."

In fact, the Birmingham News reported immediately following the speech that the state's largest health insurer, the nonprofit Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama, has about a 75% market share. A representative of the company indicated that its "profit" averaged only 0.6% of premiums the past decade, and that its administrative expense ratio is 7% of premiums, the fourth lowest among 39 Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans nationwide.

Similarly, a Dec. 31, 2007, report by the Alabama Department of Insurance indicates that the insurer's ratio of medical-claim costs to premiums for the year was 92%, with an administrative expense ratio (including claims settlement expenses) of 7.5%. Its net income, including investment income, was equivalent to 2% of premiums in that year.

In addition to these consumer friendly numbers, a survey in Consumer Reports this month reported that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama ranked second nationally in customer satisfaction among 41 preferred provider organization health plans. The insurer's apparent efficiency may explain its dominance, as opposed to a lack of competition—especially since there are no obvious barriers to entry or expansion in Alabama faced by large national health insurers such as United Healthcare and Aetna.

Dear Senators:
At your request, the staffs of our two organizations have collaborated on a preliminary analysis of a modified proposal for comprehensive health insurance based on S. 334, the “Healthy Americans Act,” which you introduced last year. That modified proposal includes various clarifications and changes that you have indicated you would like to examine as part of the consideration of that bill. Attachment A summarizes our understanding of your modified proposal....


Overall, our preliminary analysis indicates that the proposal would be roughly budget-neutral in 2014. That is, our analysis suggests that your proposal would be essentially self-financing in the first year that it was fully implemented. That net result reflects large gross changes in Federal revenues and outlays that would roughly offset each other....


For the years after 2014, we anticipate that the fiscal impact would improve gradually, so that the proposal would tend to become more than self-financing and thereby would reduce future budget deficits or increase future surpluses.

CBO Scoring of Wyden/Bennett Healty Americans Act

http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/91xx/doc9184/05...Care-Letter.pdf

.. and the persons in the non-profit corporation retain their full First Amendment protections from the gubment.

My impression is that only those non-profits setup specifically for political purposes have the right to make political contributions.

Obama supports the BIMBO plan (Big Insurance Monopoly Bail Out)

I don't like this plan at all.

First it is going to force people to buy insurance from private businesses. This is government extortion on behalf of private enterprise and it is wrong, and likely unconstitutional.

Second, it is going to let private insurers continue to cherry pick clientele and put the sick into a "public plan" that isn't an option even which means that the insurers will basically just print money without risk.

Third, leverage remains as it is today in the hands of big insurance companies who can and will continue to roll over their insureds.

I'm sorry I ain't buying.

Medicare for All or I March on Washington and so should you. Big corporations are happy and drooling over this CORPORATIST plan advanced by Obama, and they with their media cohorts and the other half of the Corporate sales team, the Republicans are fooling way too many Americans with a TERRIBLE DEAL that WILL NOT control costs and will not fix anything.

Nobody got near Obama with a gun.

nobody got near bush with the wrong shirt

Monday, September 14, 2009


NEW STRATEGY ... JUST DON'T TALK ABOUT IT

By Neal Boortz @

There is the negotiate drug price nonsense again... cannot remove it from the formulary and cannot take away the patent per the amendments the last time around... there is no drug negotiation option.

Negotiate MRI prices... and the alternative is no MRIs for Medicare beneficiaries if the providers will not reduce their prices?

U.S. workers who have health insurance for their families through employers have seen premiums more than double in the last decade, according to a survey released on Tuesday.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average premium for a company-provided family health insurance plan rose from $5,791 in 1999 to $13,375, a 131 percent jump.

Employees' portion of those costs have risen accordingly, from $1,543 on average a decade ago to $3,515 this year.

Employers, too, have see their costs shoot up from $4,247 in contributions in 1999 to $9,860 in 2009 on average.

"The fact that premiums keep going up in any particular year --it's not always a lot, but over time it really does add up," said Kaiser Vice President Gary Claxton, who led the study.

The survey is based on information that Kaiser, along with the Health Research and Educational Trust, collected earlier this year from more than 2,000 public and private companies with at least three workers.

The findings come as Democratic lawmakers push their health reform plan, which U.S. President Barack Obama has said will build on the nation's current model in which most people under the age of 65 who have health insurance get it through their employers.

Overall the study found no big changes from 2008 among companies that offer coverage. But Claxton said the survey misses one big issue: it cannot account for the number of employees who lost their coverage because they were fired or their company went out of business....



....among those companies still offering health plans, 21 percent said they had reduced benefits or asked workers to pay additional costs while 15 percent said they had increased workers' share of the insurance premium.

For 2010, companies said they also would shift more costs to workers, with 42 percent saying they would increase employees' premiums and 39 percent saying employees would pay more for doctor visits. Thirty-seven percent said workers would have to pay more for prescription medicines....

Take the thing that is bankrupting us and make it bigger. I can only assume so we go bankrupt faster.

Undo those two amendments. Allow the Feds to vitiate patents and copyrights for failure to negotiate in good faith. Push come to shove, revoke their corporate charter.

Now, THAT would be a policy that would be worthy of all the names you all call the Dems.

There's be skiing, figure-skating, and snow-fights in hell when any or all of that happens.