Comments on: Notes from “Medicare for All: Still the One”

By: Norman Viray

Norman Viray — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 17:15:33 +0000

Keep in mind that State governments also pay for the jails LOL! Jail overcrowding is a rampant problem LOL! People who are healthcare uninsured will be jailed because they cannot pay the penalty? Give us a break!!!

SOLUTION: A NEW PROGRESSIVE HEALTH CARE TAX

This is how it works: For people (young and old 16 years and over) and families earning under 20K, 1% of their paycheck is automatically deducted for heath care tax. 30K and under but over 20k 1.5%, 40K and under but over 30K 2%. 70K and under but over 40K 2.5%. 100K and under but over 70K 3%. 150K and under but over 100k 3.5%. 250K and under but over 150k 4%. 300K and under but over 250K 4.5%, 400K and under but over 300k 5%….and so on and so forth…

Of course the rich has to share the wealth unless they are inconsiderate financial sociopaths!

By: Norman Viray

Norman Viray — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 15:10:24 +0000

Still unacceptable to vote yes as of March 19, 2010…Mandating everyone to pay for health insurance (including small businesses) or else pay penalties? That sounds extortion to me! What if your one of the 40 million who are uninsured and unemployed and also no money left after paying just the rent, food, basic clothing and transportation? double whammy! Where else these people get the money upfront to purchase health insurance? High interest loans? Your bailing out the banks and health insurance companies again!!!
AMEND THIS CLAUSE BEFORE VOTING YES AND CREATE SOME EXCEPTIONS!!!

By: Brian Greene

Brian Greene — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:44:15 +0000

Becky, I think we have to face the reallity that we’re not going to get our single payer system any time soon. The politics we’ve seen the past year prove this sad fact. I’ve come to the conclusion I’m very alone on this one. Unfortunately, most of my fellow Republicans just aren’t within me regarding single payer, mandates or Washington involvement. Most of them are a lost cause because they’re too lazy to think for themselves or check their bruised egos at the door of doing what’s right. With that said, if the Dems can’t get a simple public option passed with control of the House, Senate and White House I have no faith they’ll ever get single payer passed. There’s too many Blue Dogs who are really purple Republicans. I think we’ve got to face the fact that if we truly care about getting people the care they need anytime soon we have to work within crap system we’ve created for ourselves. So let’s make it illegal to deny care, discriminate and recind.Let’s make it illegal to make profits on peoples lives and regulate the heck out of these companies so they can’t make money on the healthcare people need. Make them compete for us if they want our business and award them for quality care and paying claims faster then their competitors. Harness the greed that’s gotten them to where they are today. Let’s tranform them into good members of society most of their founders intended. Let’s pass laws that make the system work for us instead of against us. Many countries like Germany and Switzerland have a history of private insurance companies and have made this transformation. Let’s give them a bone and let them make their money selling supplemental plans for botox and boob jobs and private rooms. I know it’s alot more complicated then this but there are smart people who can figure this out. Let’s make our leaders transform these guys into good citizens. There are thousands of good honest people working at these companies who never dreamed they would be part of a system that let people die. I’d gurantee most of them never knew the day they started how the system really impacted people. Like most of us, they were simply looking for a decent paying job with health insurance. Let’s show the greeding Exec’s the door and keep the lower ranks on the job doing jobs that ensure claims are paid fully and timely and get rewarded for doing just that. As they discover that it doesn’t take as many people to do just what I’ve said let’s provide incentives to transition them into providing frontline healthcare for the millions of people who will need them when they can actually afford to see a doctor. Please don’t get me wrong. If I could get single payer tomorrow I’d be the first to sign up. I just don’t want to get so close minded on this that I’m not willing to trade the “perfect” for a very good system that’s proven you can force private insurance into becoming good citizens of society. I continue to learn that it’s lonely being in the middle. Until the left and the right meet in the middle we’ll continue to see people die or go bankrupt for the sake of chasing or fighting against the “perfect”.

By: Norman Viray

Norman Viray — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:17:53 +0000

They are not even talking about health care coverage for the chronically unemployed, chronically underemployed, and chronically temporary workers who cannot really afford anything because they are very careful of giving out to health insurance companies whatever money they have left. How can the health reform cover them?

They are not even talking about those healthy people who give up and don’t trust health insurance companies anymore. Those who are healthy want value – first dollars & medical testing/preventative coverage before any deductibles.

By: Becky Spoon

Becky Spoon — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 13:57:18 +0000

As a small business owner I have seen the discrimination and downright immoral (but amazingly legal) behavior that our uniquely American profit-before-people health unsurance industry (that simply has NO mercy) uses (and will always use because that’s what it does) against honest decent human beings. It denies and delays desperately needed medical care without remorse to the point where millions of innocent Americans have literally DIED (or been disabled, bankrupted, terrorized) as a result.

I say we must understand that pure evil IS the enemy of the good, and pure evil by any other name still stinks to high heaven. I cannot think of pure evil as “the good” by any stretch of the imagination. We must not be left to its mercy because (as I said previously) it has NONE. Leaving the health unsurance industry in control of anyone’s health care security is as wrong as wrong can be, and we have more than ample empirical evidence of this fact. It has been allowed to run so far amok for so long that it has become incapable of anything but anti-social behavior of absolutely no redeeming value. Anyone who believes otherwise has been fooled.

By: Brian Greene

Brian Greene — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 05:40:50 +0000

Dr. Coates,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my post. I was personally sold on single payer early on in my quest to understand this problem. Primarily from watching T.R. Reid’s documentary and reading his book along with reading Dr. Howard Dean’s book and watching Sicko. I’m also reading Critical Condition by Bartlett and Steele. Please remember that I did call single payer the “Perfect” solution. I’m a Republican who’s only chosen to support Healthcare reform after I made a choice to do my homework. I’ve determined first that it’s the right thing to do and should be a human right and secondly that we can’t afford to keep the status quo. I don’t have years invested in the single payer fight so I fully understand your vigorous defense in response to my Swiss model suggestion. I guess what I’m proposing is that it might be easier to attract more conservatives to fight with us if multiple models reaching the same goal are offered. While you and I both would prefer a single payer solution the goal isn’t us being right, it’s getting people quality healthcare at an affordable price and in the shortest amount of time so people don’t have to keep dying while we argue what the “Perfect” solution is. There are countries who have done this without using the single payer model ie Germany, Switzerland, Japan etc. Let’s get the “Good” done now and work toward the Perfect. Is that not reasonable?

By: Norman Viray

Norman Viray — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 23:17:21 +0000

Newsflash! Humana (a health insurance company) cutting approximately 2500 jobs! Their reason: Low enrollment.

The “majority” who are financially strapped just cannot afford the premiums anymore! Or the “majority” does not have trust and faith with the health insurance companies anymore.

I am one of the majority who does not trust the health insurance companies anymore because they technically killed my friends financially and physically by not paying on valid claims. What can you do if you lose your faith and trust? You cannot just give your hard earned dollars to these health insurance companies knowing that they will find a way to deny you and give your money to their financial sociopath Board of Directors and Officers (the powerful and rich “minority” who happens to be strong lobbyists)!

One of my friend working for Humana will probably lose her job. ***Solution: Health Insurance Analysts and Clerks who will lose their jobs must be helped to work for the hospitals as medical testing technicians or accounts receivable & payable clerks or community aid specialists ( those who will help the “majority”, who live in their hospital community to obtain healthcare protection based on sliding scale of income — like the Cook County Hospital model except it should be mandated to all private hospitals too).

If we have to eliminate the middlemen (health insurance companies), I am all for it as long as the “majority” will be served and as long the eliminated middlemen “majority” will be helped.

By: U.S. Citizen

U.S. Citizen — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 06:55:36 +0000

The perfect should not be the enemy of the good but it should be the enemy of the bad. The current proposals don’t address premium costs and benefits. The insurance companies will pretty much be able to charge what they want and to tailor policies with minimal coverage. If the legislation passes under either of these proposals they will collapse under their own weight and will probably be repealed by Repubs before they even go into effect.

By: Norman Viray

Norman Viray — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 22:48:58 +0000

Why can’t we just get along and dance together and all win together?

We live in a Capitalist society and one of the evils of our society is self-interest and corporate profit maximization at all cost.

*I am for single payer and public option and integrated health insurance/taxes/jobs bill reform.

Personally and currently,I have sick friends and relatives who end up in bankruptcy because health insurance companies denied their claims. I have physician friends who are squeezed by high malpractice insurance year in and year out. I have friends who work for health and malpractice insurance & pharmaceutical companies who are overworked and underpaid. I have unemployed and underemployed friends who cannot afford Cobra and exhausted their unemployment benefits. Our organization for the past 2 years, have been denied over 800 times and never got grant funding from the government and public/private foundations for our nonprofit organization to further our public causes we established since 1993. Hence, our volunteers don’t have health insurance.

*I fully support “Medicare to All” and in all my posts in Facebook, Linkedin, and Twitter for the past week, my wife Frances Strain and I called this “MEDISHARE”.

Everyone must concede, share, forgive, forget, and help each other!

- If we implement “Medicare for Everyone” or “MediShare”, what will be our plans for my friends who work for health insurance, malpractice insurance, and pharmaceutical companies who will lose their jobs? Any ideas? What jobs will the government create for them?

- What are we going to do with the Board of Directors & Officers of these health/malpractice insurance and pharmaceutical companies who are excessive, sociopaths, and financial sociopaths? Any ideas?

- Any ideas on how can my sick friends, who are now mostly bankrupt, recover from the evils done by health/malpractice insurance companies? They cannot even borrow money and losing their homes due to foreclosure!

- Any response President Obama, Congressmen, Senate, IRS, lobbyists, health/malpractice pharmaceutical companies, and us the majority financially poor?

EVERYONE HELP! WE NEED BALANCE! DON’T BE A FINANCIAL SOCIOPATH! PLEASE HELP EACH OTHER OUT!

By: Andy Coates, MD

Andy Coates, MD — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:15:58 +0000

Compared with the present American system, does the Swiss model – the Bismarck model – operate on the principle of social solidarity and provide basic access to healthcare for all? Of course it does.

Did anyone among the elected officials in Washington propose such a system? No.

Is there anyone who seriously demands, in the U.S. in 2010, a conversion of profit-seeking insurance to a non-profit system with heavy regulation and books open to the public – every aspect of the “business” dictated by the government? Of course not – because politically that is beyond “not feasible” – it amounts to utopian fantasy!

What the elected officials in Washington proposed instead was the bipartisan Romney reform from Massachusetts – criminalize the uninsured and force people to buy insurance. This proposal, written by the insurers themselves, is not “good,” Mr. Greene! (Indeed with such friends, who would strengthen the hand of the private insurance industry, does the “perfect” really need an “enemy”?)

Hey – thought experiment. Imagine a social force with the ideas, the people, and the supporting data capable of transforming the American insurance system of oligopoly market control by profit-seeking corporations, into a model based upon the Swiss system, the famous Bismarck model. Sure, propose to convert every corporation to non-profit, dictate what they will cover and what margin they will make, including executive compensation. TR Reid has pointed out that in Germany, the company that makes too much money has to give it to the company that has lost money.

So how do you propose to convert the United States into Switzerland, Mr. Greene? For the mass and momentum of the social force needed would be far greater than that required to simply abolish private health insurance and begin anew with Medicare for all – expanding Medicare is practical and immediately possible. Oops – perhaps that is why Healthcare-Now! has hundreds of people on the calls you find so discouraging!

One more thing. Single-payer Medicare-for-all is in fact an incremental proposal. Public financing, private delivery – this is but a small but essential step in reforming our many hideous problems with quality of care, disparities, the erosion of the privacy and the privacy and choice in the provider-patient relationship. Single payer is an increment – but the crucial building block.

Single payer now!