Like everyone else I have a lot of concerns about health care reform. I don’t trust either political party as both have been backed by the corporations. In my own job as a teacher the health insurance cost has sky rocketed since September 11th, 2001. We used to have MESSA Blue Cross Blue Shield Insurance and it was considered the “Cadillac” of all plans. After much negotiation we kept that plan for awhile and each teacher contributed about $2500 a year. Eventually, it just got too expensive and we went to a Blue Cross Blue Shield PPO plan. The cost for our school like any other business is astronomical. Those in congress that don’t want to fix this system have their heads stuck in the proverbial sand. In my opinion there is no way business can continue to sustain this cost. I believe costs could be cut considerably with a single payer system. If we all paid in with some kind of graduated plan, we would all share in the burden and perhaps we could focus negotiations on salary instead of insurance. Sharing that burden across a wide spectrum of salaries should mean the best for the greater good of all. I believe we must have healthy people to have a healthy nation. No one wants to be next to that person in public that is coughing and wheezing because they can’t afford medical care. Our country should and is better than this. It is unconscionable that there are people that become so ill that they only get to the doctor as a last resort. This is a moral indictment of our country and its lack of respect for its greatest resource, its people. We hear all of the politicians that talk about the “greatest generation” and how noble they were and how lucky we are that they fought for our freedoms in WWII. What about this generation? Why can’t we as a country stand up and declare that this generation is great and in their greatness we will devote ourselves to solving the problems of this generation and fight for their jobs, health care and general well being?
I came across this great website that has a great deal of information about the issue of health care in our country. It’s a non-partisan site and I highly recommend it for learning more about this issue.
If you move around the site you will find many areas of interests. At this point you can find a side by side comparison of the different proposals in congress.
http://www.kff.org/healthreform/sidebyside.cfm
Here is a snippet from the section about the uninsured:
Key Details:
• Workers usually enroll in employer-sponsored health insurance if they are
eligible. Since the average annual cost of employer-sponsored family coverage in
2009 was $13,375, lower income workers cannot afford these plans without
sizable contributions from their employers.3
• Since 2000, the percentage of firms offering coverage has decreased from 69% to
60% and the percent of people with employer-sponsored insurance has also
decreased. Recent declines in employers offering coverage have had the greatest
impact on low-income employees.4
• The uninsured realize that health insurance is important but cannot find affordable
coverage. In a recent government survey, only 2% of adults said that one of the
reasons they are uninsured is because they do not need coverage.5
• About three-quarters of the uninsured are uninsured for more than one year.6 The
uninsured often remain without coverage because they do not have access to
employer-sponsored insurance.
Nonelderly Uninsured by
Family Work Status, 2008
Total = 45.7 million uninsured
Another thing I came across is the fact that more people as they become unemployed are qualifying for Medicaid so we are already paying for them. As with everything it seems that the lower middle class are hurt the most, if you really consider them to be called middle class any more. I can understand small businesses that cannot afford to figure out how to pay for health insurance. If health insurance costs are getting to around $13000 for most companies how can a beginning company compete with this, or any company for that matter?
It is time for the government to close all of these loop holes for the insurance and pharmaceutical companies and reform health care for the benefit of all of us. Politicians that seem to want to stall any effort to reform this system need to be voted out for the good of all.