America's Looming Health Care Disaster: Rising Unemployment

ABC News:

Last year at this time, health coverage may well have been among the last things on Terri Rushing's mind.

Her husband, David, was 55 years old and working for Champion Homes in McKenzie, Tenn. It was a job he had held for nearly a decade and a half. He had a good Blue Cross and Blue Shield health care plan through his employer, and it was also affordable. Terri Rushing said that she and her husband paid less than $200 in premiums each month.

Read the whole story: ABC News

Comments

[LorettaSingbiel]

"Americans preferred the health insurance that comes with the job. The foolishness of that preference is becoming clear to many middle-class Americans who spent their life denigrating 'government' health insurance."

I'm fortunate to have healthcare through my spouse's employer-paid coverage. I am an ADVOCATE for UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE, but my employer-paid healthcare-entitled "pro-life" friend is ADAMENTLY AGAINST it ... because she insists that she "will have to wait MONTHS for treatment" IF our MILLIONS of un- or under-insured Americans were ALSO entitled to what she and I can CURRENTLY take for granted.

As always, her "ME, MYSELF, & I" REPUBLICAN attitude ENRAGES me. How DARE she call herself "PRO LIFE" with such LOW regard for the LIVES of those Americans UNABLE to seek medical help!!!

WHY would her ability to seek PROMPT medical help be compromised IF healthcare coverage WERE made AFFORDABLE or UNIVERSAL in this country, thus entitling MILLIONS more Americans to THEIR "RIGHT-to-LIFE"?

Could my "pro-life" girlfriend be INSISTING it would create a shortage of doctors? If so, then COLLEGE needs to be made AFFORDABLE or UNIVERSAL in this country ALSO, so that Americans may choose an education in the medical profession.

PHONY "pro-lifers" need to join the human (HUMANE) race in a WILLINGNESS to CARE for their fellow man!!! THEY need to worship their "God(s)" MORE than their money!!! (What would their "Jesus" do?)

[truthforme]

They have been brainwashed by their Republican politicians and refuse to look at actual FACTS. By the way, they also think Sarah Palin would make a good president.

'nuff said.

[TeenaGreena]

This is a very scary reality for people on the verge of retirement, who lost their job and insurance and are too young for medicare. Its like a ticking time bomb. Unfortunately my mother is in this position.

[SonofLiberty1]

I'm living this right now. I pay $450 per month for Blue Cross...Hopefully , things will get better but I don't know when. Mom has cancer, is still working and has spinal problems and is really too weak for the 10 hour surgery so she is on pain meds, at least they work well. As of a few months ago, I stopped looking for work because I have to take her to work and back every day.

I would like to personally holler at these idiots who outsourced my job and the 74 others from my entire office!

That's why I say never buy Panasonic again and stay far, far, far away from ITC Group, Inc.!

[WorriedParent]

Here is a simple breakdown of the situation:

Player A: Average American, a health care consumer
Player B: Physician/Hospital/Etc, provider of health care
Player C: Insurance company
[Player D: Pharmaceutical company, but I will not be discussing them here for the moment]

Player A needs health care services from Player B. Player B has 2 motivating factors: 1) providing good service to Player A, and b) making a living to support his/her family (or the families of its employees, as in the case of non-profit hospitals)

Player C stands between Player A and Player B. Player C facilitates the administrative aspects of the interaction of Players A and B, HOWEVER, Player C has no vested interest in Player A or Player B. Player C has a singular commitment to its profit margin and its shareholders, it does not care about your mother receiving the best medicine to fight her cancer or your doctor being able to spend a full 30 minutes with you at your next visit (rather than rushing through to see 30 patients a day and having to submit a mountain of paperwork to justify your need to be seen in the first place). Insurance companies have no interest in medicine or health care, they are just as much the Wall Street monster as Goldman Sachs, in fact some of them are branches of the same bank conglomerates that have dragged us into this economic abyss, complete with obnoxious executive pay and golden parachutes.

[WorriedParent]

(Cont'd)
I have spent much time in and around health care and I have yet to hear ONE single coherent argument to support the existence of FOR PROFIT insurance companies in the health care system. It makes ZERO sense and yet the deep pockets of the insurance lobby always guarantee that sense or logic do not enter into any of our legislative deliberations regarding the health care system. Health insurance companies could and SHOULD be non-profit (think of the credit union alternative in banking). The US may not be ready or willing to embrace a nationalized health care system, but why are we being bullied and frightened by the right wing into believing that it is the only alternative to the status quo (i.e., scare slogans like "keep things as they are or you will have socialized medicine")?

[FightingTheRight]

I work in the healthcare administrative field and agree 100%.

Health insurance companies are barriers between the patient and the healthcare providers.

And the Republican mantra that more competition is need to bring cost down and expand coverage to those with pre-existing conditions has been proven false, since we already have 100s of insurers doing business here.

Insurance premiums keep going up and people are still denied coverage.

Insurance companies still dictate which treatments are allowed.

[FightingTheRight]

For those who bring up the cost.

Once you remove the "for profit" insurance companies form the system, it frees up alot of money to pay for universal healthcare.

[darthdarcy]

We need single payer health care, as most of the civilized world has..!

Medicare for all or non profit Insurance based would work this would cut 32% from the current cost of those insured as Medicare runs itself on only 6% administration cost...compared to the 38% profit that now goes to insurance companies..!

[mh01]

That's not a health care crisis. Medicare and medicaid are a health care crisis. As in, No-one else will be able to pay for health care in 15 years when we have to carry everyone elses health care costs on the dole.

Unemployment is peanuts compared to the age wave, or rather tsunami, that is retiring and going from payors to payees.

Why is no one talking about this?

[vippy]

Answer me this, why then are we AGAINST abortions? Yet countries cry foul when they don't have
enough population to sustain their MEDICARE or Social Security System, yet the government
continues to borrow money from it. Don't talk about fixing the problem until you addressed the
root of the problem.

[manitoumackinac]

COBRA is all that great. You pay your premium along with your ex-employer's contribution, and then add 2 percent on top of it. Not so great when your unemployed.

[chronic]

COBRA is a rip off!


The premiums are HUGE!

[SonofLiberty1]

Been there and done that...you have my sympathy!

[tomas0808]

This is where the corporate scum have brought us. A reasonable life for the working class has become so impossible and expensive that people will be sawing off their legs so they can get on disability and Medicaid just to have some safety and security. Just watch.

[Kassandra]

I don't think that'll work out very well. Bush is already trying to scrap medicaid in the last weeks of his "adminstration"

[Kassandra]

I know several people who've voted Republican all their lives to avoid a national health care system. Now they're losing their shirts and their jobs over this Republican economy. I wonder what they were thinking...that if they were Republicans the angle of death would pass them by?

And that's not the only thing going wrong.

The doctors don't want to treat folks on medicaid/medicare.........(if that's even going to be around much longer) They, like many people, think they should be immune from this catastrophe and while the programs last, it may wind up being the only money they will actually see for a while.

It all originated in the class war started by Reagan with the idea of somebody getting something for nothing which was always a lie and still is, except for the corporations and banks, that is.

Bush DID manage to roll back the social programs of FDR.

Oh, Mr Obama? We DO want prosecution of these criminals no matter what your advisers tell you.

[SonofLiberty1]

So what do these Republican idiots say?

[vippy]

All I can say, they deserve what is coming to them for being stupid. There are still people today
who say Bush has done great and other people lived beyond their means LOL.

[Haditup2here]

You would think that if many companies and businesses would be for universal health care -- but then again a significant number of companies are probably against it since it maybe the only reason some why some of their employees work there in the first place.

[Haditup2here]

A quote from the article:

[And she has encountered little sympathy. In one conversation with a health insurance company she contacted, she explained to the customer service representative her difficult situation.

"I asked him, 'So, basically, what you're telling me is that we have a choice between having a house payment and having health insurance.' And he says, 'It sounds like you have a problem.'

"That's it. That's all."]

Disgusting. I wonder how that representative would feel if he was to lose HIS job?!

[mjb5406]

He has as much empathy as a typical telemarketer. The health insurers don't really give a crap about people... it's all about shareholder dividends.

[hereitis]

You are exactly right. I have worked in hospitals and for insurance companies. No one is actually interested in taking care of patients. It's ALL about the money. It's really disgusting.

[tbone99]

We are about to see the crack in the tied to employment healthcare system. I expect hospitals will soon be asking for a bailout .

[Haditup2here]

I think it would be more of an irony if the Health Insurance Companies were to ask for a bailout. To me it is the biggest rip-off in this country -- even before banks. They always seem to increase premiums while cutting benefits and no one knows what the overhead cost is.

[schatsie]

There are insurance commissioners in EVERY STATE... and we need the tax returns publicized for each and every non-profit and for the insurance companies.... This is a disaster and is now taking about 2 trillion dollars out of the economy each and every year... Some of it is understandable.. BUT how much would this drop if people could get drugs from Canada instead of the Medicare Drug Ripoff system (funnelling more profits to Big Pharma...)