Health Care Bill

[bd]

Ok, more math here ----  "a fine that's a little smaller" ??  I currently pay $900/month for health insurance and it's nothing special.  I just paid $400 for my portion of having a CT scan last week.  The fine is $695 per year. So, let's do some multiplication.... 900x12= $10,800 OR $695.  I know which I'd prefer!

I respectfully disagree - not with the numbers but with the "behavior behind the math."

What you miss is that it's $695.00 per year with nothing to show for it.  Just think, if you really preferred not to spend the money on health insurance, you'd drop it now and save even MORE because you wouldn't have to pay the $695!  But you don't do that, because you couldn't have afforded to go into that CT scan (or some other catastrophic health expense) without health insurance.

Businesses provide health insurance now because it's impossible to recruit decent talent if you don't offer it.  It's a reality of the modern job market.  Again, they're providing health insurance now with NO fine, so they're not going to pay a fine to stop offering it.  And that doesn't even take into account the subsidies and tax credits that will offset the cost of buying the insurance.

bd

[Dub]

I don't want to GOV telling me that I have to buy anything. Where in the constitution is health care covered. The feds have voted themselves way to much power over the american public. Good plain or bad plain? Who cares? What will we do when they make us buy bait casting gear.  Hell, I think I have some bait casting gear in the shop. Anything to do with the IRS is bad! Just plain bad!

[John M]

Mike, you definetly nailed it on the head with the biggest buildings in any town being that of the ins. companys and banks.  I have said the same thing for years.  I guess I just dont trust the gov. to run anything.  I just think choice and real competetion, not gov. taking money from someone and giving it to somone who did not earn it would really lower prices.  If someone can provide a quality product at a lower price they will get my business. Maybe it's my southern independent roots that don't want anybody telling me what I have to buy or do.  When you have to work 3-5 mos out of year for the government before you start keeping your wages something is wrong.  Reagan said that if people got to keep their whole paycheck and had to write a weekly check to the gov. there would be a revolt in one week.  Every dollar the gov. spends they took from somebody without asking.  Hell I guarantee you the av. family in TN making 56,0000 a year pays close to or more than 10,800 a year in taxes.  They could do a lot with that if the gov did not think they knew how to better spend someone else's money.  Health care definetly needs to be affordable but that doesn't mean we should saccrifice quality and go back to just sawing off a limb because its the cheapest route.  Medicine like any other technology changes very quickly and that new technolgy is not cheap.  When the incitive of profit is taken away so is the incintive to develop new and better procedures.  I know I would spend every last cent I had for the life of a loved one.  Maybe the new car, biggest house, or latest sage rod wouldn't matter so much then.

[John M]

BD, those subsidies and tax credits are working out well for the employees at Catipiler and Verizon who are being laid off 2 days after passage of this bill

[MikeA]

John that's just it. We've been trusting these banks and insurance companies for years and they've just about bankrupted our country. Why in the Hell either party bailed out any of these traitors, many of whom were foreign, (against the peoples will mind you) is beyond me.

I see this bill more as a Gov oversight then a gov takeover. If I'm wrong about this bill I'll eat crow no doubt. It won't be the first time.