Comments on: How Will We Pay For The Health Care Plan?

Reality Check: Report Shows Health Care Reform Could Cost Upwards Of $1 Trillion

[ctb4679]

How can we continue with the terrible system we have now? We are 37th in the world for quality of health care. Even the socialist health care in the UK and Canada, that the Republicans hate, result in healthier citizens than the US! Republicans want the insurance companies to continue to rape American business and citizens and health care providers to pay the insurance company profits. We have to change.

[tazmjam]

Individual and employer-based health insurance is already based on a ?risk pool? philosophy. If you have a preexisting condition you?re too big a risk, if you?re a small business and one or two of your employees get seriously ill, the premiums go up and all the employees are put in a higher risk pool because the profit for that small group plan is no longer as great. If you?re a female of childbearing age you?re in a higher ?risk pool? because you may have children, which cuts into the insurance companies profits. If you are older and healthy you?re in a higher risk pool because the chances of you getting ill increases with age. Car insurance rates are not just based on your driving record; in some states they use your credit rating and where you live to help determine rates. Now a plan that would allow private insurance companies to bid on offering health insurance coverage to different regions of the country (for a specific length of time 1-2 years) with a set rate for everyone on the plan regardless of age, gender, or preexisting conditions, this might work. A large group of people could keep the cost down, and the region would have the buying power for the best rates just like very large companies. This might work, but not a risk pool...a risk pool would punish people based on age, gender, their health, where they live, their credit, etc... just so many things it boggles the mind. Also, for this plan to work, yes just like with car insurance everyone would have to have minimum coverage (at least catastrophic and wellness type insurance). That still leaves the issue of why people in the US are paying so much more for drugs, spiraling cost, hospital and insurance companies administrative waste, etc. to be addressed and dealt with.

[dg441-2009]

Take away the free health care for all the prisoners.

[eroosevelt08]

Senator McCain should be working to accomplish the goal of insuring and improving the health of Americans instead of simply complaining about the President.

We could save trillions by cutting out the entire layer of middle managers in health care: the insurance companies.

[SugrDaddy]

"Reagen proved deficits don't matter" Richard Cheney.

[andylance1]

There needs to be a systemic reform of the entire health care system to save costs. We should examine the German system which includes paying for complementary medicine and acceptance of naturopathic medicine.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Allopathic medicine has fought all competetition for over eighty years. They publish bogus studies saying vitamins and herbs are worthless. All competition is a threat to their stranglehold on the current broken and too expensive system.

[NoBigGovt]

Obamacare is a nightmare. It is another step to get us to a single payer gov't run system which would be the end of quality healthcare in this nation. The lie about you being able to keep your existing plan is just that .. a lie. Your existing plan will not be able to compete with a gov't plan therefore the private insurance plans will dry up.

I need to ask an honest question to all the supporters of this....

Why would you give control of your healthcare to the same fools who have, just to name a few:

1.) run Social Security into the ground.... they stole the money
2.) run Medicare into the ground ... they stole the money
3.) run Medicaid into the ground ... they stole the money
4.) destroyed the housing market with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

This is not about Republican vs. Democrat ... this is about liberty. Once they have their hooks into the healthcare system, there is nothing to stop them from prying into every aspect of your life under the lie of "cutting costs".

[cyberus-2009]

Of course, to make this work they are going to have to make it mandatory.

If you don't get medical insurance through your job already you have to buy into a basic plan, which if they treated it like car insurance would be issued through a "risk pool" system through the private insurance system rather than creating another entitlement like medicare/medicaid

[tazmjam]

Individual and employer-based health insurance is already based on a ?risk pool? philosophy. If you have a preexisting condition you?re too big a risk, if you?re a small business and one or two of your employees get seriously ill, the premiums go up and all the employees are put in a higher risk pool because the profit for that small group plan is no longer as great. If you?re a female of childbearing age you?re in a higher ?risk pool? because you may have children, which cuts into the insurance companies profits. If you are older and healthy you?re in a higher risk pool because the chances of you getting ill increases with age. Car insurance rates are not just based on your driving record; in some states they use your credit rating and where you live to help determine rates. Now a plan that would allow private insurance companies to bid on offering health insurance coverage to different regions of the country (for a specific length of time 1-2 years) with a set rate for everyone on the plan regardless of age, gender, or preexisting conditions, this might work. A large group of people could keep the cost down, and the region would have the buying power for the best rates just like very large companies. This might work, but not a risk pool...a risk pool would punish people based on age, gender, their health, where they live, their credit, etc... just so many things it boggles the mind. Also, for this plan to work, yes just like with car insurance everyone would have to have minimum coverage (at least catastrophic and wellness type insurance). That still leaves the issue of why people in the US are paying so much more for drugs, spiraling cost, hospital and insurance companies administrative waste, etc. to be addressed and dealt with.

[incog-nito]

America didn't have public education at one time, but now it does. It didn't have social security, but now it does. It didn't have Medicare, but now it does. And conservatives have opposed every step of the way, each time arguing that it "costs too much" or "not my problem".

America doesn't have universal health care, but it will. Conservatives will oppose it, but they will fail, like they always did. You can't stop progress.

[humptydumpty1]

The question CBS should ask is: Why does Congress think it makes economic, moral, ethical, societal or common sense to require the most responsible and productive Americans to foot the medical coverage and moral hazard bill for the most irresponsible, unproductive and/or destructive Americans?

When a convicted rapist ends up on a liver transplant list ahead, not of a member of Congress, heaven forbid, but ahead of some responsible and hard working American (perhaps one with five or six life saving, medical patents to her name), CBS will question how that could have ever happened.

Well, Congress is getting ready to pass a bill with that very impact built into it, but instead of readily comprehending that ridiculous fact, CBS is sooo friggin left wing that about all it can do is fail to comprehend how "we" will pay for medical care that will be so awful, inefficient and wasteful that nobody who understands how a Congress full of economic and moral nitwits usually pays for things (with borrowed and soon to be Zimbabwe like dollars) gives a rip how exactly it will further bankrupt an already bankrupt country.