THE MIDDLE CLASS LACK OF INSURANCELike many, I thought only the poor and or disabled,like myself lack health or adequate health insurance. Read below and gaze at the income levels:
Middle-Class Americans Join Ranks of Uninsured in 2006 as Private Coverage ShrinksFOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contacts: Number of Uninsured Swells 2.2 Million to 47 Million15,000 Doctors: "Single Payer National Health Insurance is the Only Solution"Download state by state figures: Census Bureau Data: CHICAGO ? The U.S. Census Bureau released data today showing that the number of uninsured Americans jumped by 2.2 million in 2006 to 47.0 million people, with nearly all the increase (2.03 million) concentrated among middle-class Americans earning over $50,000 per year, according to an analysis by Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). Strikingly, 1.4 million of the newly uninsured were in families making over $75,000 per year. An additional 600,000 were in families earning $50,000 to $75,000 per year. (The median household income in 2006 was $48,200). "Middle income Americans are now experiencing the human suffering that comes with being uninsured. It makes any illness a potential economic and social catastrophe," said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, co-founder of Physicians for a National Health Program and Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School. Holy Cow! (Bolding is mine.) dpDP, out of curiosity, how do you propose the United States pay for healthcare for everyone? By what standard do you feel you are entitled to for healthcare provided free by the government without working for it? Please do not take this the wrong way. I am only asking from a business stand point.
Medicare is a health care model that works and works VERY well. Plus, according to most expert analysis implementing a universal health care program will SAVE 30% of our annual health care costs in the first year. As for how are we going to pay, we're paying now. Only a huge portion of the money goes for exorbitant executive salaries while benefits are cut or denied. There are very few comprehensive plans and people find out the hard way they are underinsured, often denied chemo, surgery and follow-up care that could save their lives or improve their conditions. Health care is the only service for which the consumer can not bargain or comparison shop. The recent propaganda about making healthcare consumers more aware of cost and, therefore, better shoppers is hype because it's nearly impossible to get cost comparisons. Even the major newspapers have reported on the difficulty of comparing costs as fees are not listed or willingly provided, so the idea that consumers can manage their health care cost is nonsense. Americans are very resistant to change and not very good at looking our for one another. Well, OK. those opposed to Universal Health Care may not give a hoot about their neighbors but when illness or accident comes calling you'll learn like thousands before you that affordable , accessible, comprehensive health care will be out of reach. For those who do care go to www.healthcare-org and sign the Medicare for All petition. Then go to www.Congress.org and e-mail your elected representatives. One more thing....NOTHING and I mean NOTHING the government provides is FREE. We , taxpaying Americans, pay for it all. It's just way past time that this basic right, one available in all industrialized nations, comes to these shores. All, We are all paying more now and getting less. The loss of productivity and education for those who dare to be ill, get involved in an accident or inherit chronic disease is staggering. We are all paying for this every day. Seen the price of premiums or scripts lately? They skyrocket every month. No one is immune from this and until we recognize that allowing for-profit corps to deny health care is insanity, we will go on putting more of our income out for less return. That is the business model we are seeing now. Businesses cannot afford to provide for this non-functional medical system. The shift of all costs to the consumer has resulted in almost 50 million Americans now trying to survive with no health care coverage. This is nonsense. As we argue about how to avoid the inevitable, more and more working people are losing everything to this broken "system". It is time to wake up. We can bicker all day about how we do this but this will change anyway. We have the resources to start wars around the world, hand out no-bid contracts to political cronies and spend billions on lifestyle enhancements. We are watching this administration fight health care for children, even as we realize that children need to be able to see a doctor. What in the hell are the priorities for this country? How much more of this destructive stupidity are we willing to sit and watch? For some actual facts and workable ideas, try www.Covertheuninsured.org. Then take the one minute you have to contact Congress at www.Congress.org. This will be the easiest thing you will do today.We are about the only country in the world that does not have any form of UHC. If we take the high taxes we pay,the money used for nonsense research,ie: studying the reproductive behaviour of shoe flies in corn fields, all that coporate welfare,wars,the exhorbitant salaries of political patronage etc.etc. We can afford UHC. People already covered with state or private insurance can keep the coverage. The disabled need much more health attention than the generally "healthy." As far as mental illness goes: if the public is SO AFRAID of those relatively FEW VIOLENT mental patients doing damage to themselves and their families; it would make sense that the public would give health care(medications)to the most violent mentally ill. Make sense? If people are so afraid of supporting the above; why not empty all those hospitals for the criminally insane and let them hit the streets? Gee, they should WORK for their anti-psychotic meds also. dp | |
|
Career Tips
|