More Americans Trapped In Increasingly Expensive Plans

[happy_liberal]

"Will Dow, a professor of health economics at the University of California, says the rate hike reflects an individual insurance market that is fundamentally broken. Anthem has a reputation for cherry-picking healthier consumers and trying to shake sicker ones, he said...

...the sick don't really have the option of dropping coverage. Pre-existing conditions allow other insurers, who otherwise would provide competition, to decline to cover these individuals.

Jeanne Morales of Encino, Calif., was outraged when United HealthCare Inc. jacked up the premium of the PacifiCare individual plan covering her and her husband. Back-to-back hikes in October and November raised the couple's monthly premium from about $1,450 month to $2,432, a combined increase of 68 percent.

Morales wants to drop the policy, but says there's no where else to go. She had a partial hysterectomy to remove a non-cancerous ovarian cyst a month ago. She said her insurance broker told her she has to wait at least a year to be symptom free before she can even think about finding another individual insurance product.

"That's all there is to do. There's just not any choices," she said. "We have thought about just not carrying insurance at all, but it's scary for us."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/15/health-care-costs-more-am_n_462449.html

[leftstreet]

1. You can get a degree in 'Health Economics?'

FFS

[upi402]

2. Healthcare system broken, governmental system broken, election system broekn

campaign funding... broken, etc etc etc


ad infinitum

[Echo In Light]

5. Representative democracy, L O N G broken/failed

[loudsue]

14. +1. Absolutely broken. The whole Republic needs re-thinking.

Democracy is a great thing, if the voting machines aren't controlled by the corporations, which are the primary corrupting force in the world currently. A two-party system owned by the corporations is NOT conducive to rule "by the people". This system is WORSE than the one we fought for originally. It's killing people willy nilly by the thousands.

[GiveMeFreedom]

12. Umm?

broekn

the system is so broken that the word broken is broken .... couldn't help myself, seemed so appropriate. :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[izquierdista]

3. I'm going to start a plan

When you get sick and need to make a claim, we fly you to France, where we have you already enrolled in THEIR health care system. :think:

[leftstreet]

4. That would be cheaper!

:-)

[happy_liberal]

6. I think you might be on to something there...

:rofl:

[Sgent]

7. Don't forget

the Senate plan is so much worse than this... oh wait.

[SoCalDem]

8. People with insurance are wage-slaves..held hostage

because they fear the loss of insurance:( (we lived that way for a LONG time too)

Imagine all the entrepreneurs who never got a chance to start their own business because they had a family and did not dare lose their company insurance.

This whole "experiment" has gone totally Frankenstein on the workers. It went from being a real benefit, in an era when they still got wage increases & had pensions, to a raise-sucking leech, bleeding them dry of would-be raises AND what little they have left of their paychecks....and by making them fearful of even trying to change jobs or of starting their own businesses.

[stillwaiting]

11. This is enrages me SO much! Right wingers like to say they're for "freedom", but they fail to see

just how enslaved they are under this corporate, for profit health insurance system.

You are SO right! I have plenty of friends that would have started their own business had it not been for what their family would lose without big corporate health insurance packages that are only available if you work for big business or the military.

I also know of two people that have literally had to move very, very far (to other states) in order to get health insurance coverage for their family. They certainly do NOT have the freedom to live where they truly want to live.

"Freedom" to right wingers means the freedom for corporations to do whatever they want to American citizens. It certainly does NOT mean freedom that applies to individual citizens. We are much, much, MUCH more enslaved than right wingers could ever imagine due to their willful denial and propensity to swallow right wing propaganda.

[endless october]

9. drop the medicare age to zero.

then we can discuss how to pay for it. i have a couple ideas.

[phantom power]

13. +oo

[Cassandra]

10. My yearly premiums were $14,000 +...

but I have now been accepted into a group and my yearly premiums will be just under $6K. The policy isn't as good (as the basic HMO for 14K I had before) but I can't afford the old policy anymore. I feel both somewhat humiliated and very angry.

[bvar22]

15. Hey, Its a Free Market!

I don't begrudge them their MILLIONS.
Look at all the Baseball Players.
I didn't campaign on a Public Option.
.
.
.
.
.

"There are forces within the Democratic Party who want us to sound like kinder, gentler Republicans.
I want us to compete for that great mass of voters that want a party that will STAND UP
for working Americans, family farmers, and people who haven't felt the benefits of the economic upturn."
---Paul Wellstone

[happy_liberal]

16. kick

:kick: