Please stay on topic. Please don't be asses.
That looks like a good point, and also a good talking point.
Perhaps some of the advocacy groups should demand that the "public option"
be straight-up FEHBP for any American who cares to opt into it.
How's the employer contribution to FEHBP so different than what other major employers' offer their employees?
It's a cheap shot about a public option that misses the mark completely, Digby. Kinda disappointing considerING you've been pretty much spot on the issue all along.
Sirius the Star Dog,
Sometimes the cheap shot is the kill shot. If this talking point could enter public consciousness, and then be turned around to demand legislating the same degradation to FEHBP that Obama and the Senators wish to inflict on worksite coverage for others; it might make degrading worksite coverage for others a little harder for Senators to vote for. And easier for the House to vote against.
The cheap shot is sometimes the kill shot.
As a mid-level Federal civil servant I can state by checking my pay stub that I pay $115 every two weeks for HMO coverage and the government pays $347. Not a bad deal with many choices in FEHBP though we are being hit with higher premiums every year also with decreasing coverage and higher co-pays but just not as hard as private companies. I believe that is because of the purchasing power of the Fed. A plan just like this for everyone would be a great thing.
Another FEHBP-eligible worker here, through the USPS.
Sorry, but the Federal plan sucks. Hard. Choosing from the various plans takes a calculus that even Feynman would have balked at solving. The coverage is abysmal, the premiums are disgustingly high for coverage with so much fine print that you end up paying thousands out of pocket for even basic tests and surgeries. I have been round and round and round with coverage providers for years about things like surgeon fees (using "plan-approved" surgeons), anesthesia (using "plan-approved" anesthesiologists), and fees for using the damned operating room (at "plan-approved" facilities). And these were procedures approved in advance by the insurers!
Worse, there is no doctor, at least in my region of the country, who lets you get away with paying only the co-pay. As soon as they see "FEHBP," you pay the full fee, until you reach your deductible. I have been round and round on this with insurers and doctors, in multiple cities of employment, and still end up paying full amounts until I reach my ever-increasing deductible.
I finally gave up my FEHBP insurance for my husband's private company insurer. I've had a lot fewer headaches!
In short, I'd rather swallow battery acid than have FEHBP as the "standard" for national health care.
I want what the Brits or the French have. Period. Anything less is an insult.
Worth having? Perhaps. But that's not the one we're going to get, as Hipparchia shows, by actually looking at, ya know, stuff like income calculations.
Here's a fine definition of bullshit from WikiPedia from the collegiate context:
"""To discourse upon the contexts, frames of reference and points of observation which would determine the origin, nature, and meaning of data if one had any. To present evidence of an understanding of form in the hope that the reader may be deceived into supposing a familiarity with content."""
".... data if one had any." Here, Digby can do nothing other than speculate, since -- as we see here -- "a public plan [or is it 'option,' I wish they'd make up their minds] worth having" cannot be defined in the absence of data regarding the actual, er, plan. Hence the bullshit. There are a lot of things worth having, including ponies, and this is one of them, but since it's not on offer, why confuse the issue still further?
"I finally gave up my FEHBP insurance for my husband's private company insurer. I've had a lot fewer headaches!
In short, I'd rather swallow battery acid than have FEHBP as the "standard" for national health care."
Nice that you had a real choice available.
There are many who have no health care and no other options available such as yours.
Why do we Americans always become so myopic and self centered when the greater good is at stake?
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