The state of health insurance in this country is terrible. And getting worse and worse while the country as a wholebecomes more unhealthy. My husband is a public school teacher, so we don't pay monthly premiums, but we might as well. Our health insurance is so terrible, it doesn't even pay for yearly check-ups in addition to having outrageous out of pocket expenses and deductables. The state of health insurance is definately one of my soap boxes. In fact, I think I will have to rant about myself, soon. It is embarrasing that we are one of the only industrial countries to not have universal health care.
For the snarky reference to Hayek- I think you've just become my new hero
Ah, but credit for the Hayek invocation goes to Norbiz. I must sadly pass along my newfound hero status to him!
First, all hail billing goddesses everywhere!
Second, here in Massachusetts, we are about to get mandatory coverage for all residents. We'll see how that goes. The Republican governor (Mitt "the Git" Romney) loudly supported and then approved the bill after it passed both houses, saying among other things that it was about time the state required its people to take responsibility for their own medical costs, and then he vetoed the part of the bill where employers who don't offer health insurance would have to help pay for it. Nice, and so typical.
This guy wants to be your next president. Run like hell.
I'm so lucky. My Medicare coverage is "only" $200.00 a month with sucky Kaiser.
The problem with the mass bill (as I understand it)is that it doesn't actually pay for universal coverage- but it does create a platform for it in the near future. So yay them.
Congrats on getting it taken care of!
Red Queen, it's supposed to offer subsidies for poor people so they can afford to buy insurance through a helpful clearinghouse kind of office the Commonwealth will set up. A person making what I make ($14K right now) would get help finding the right coverage, and then would only have to pay about $15 a month for it. People making less would pay less. People making over a certain amount of money (I forget how much) would be deemed able to afford whatever's out there and would be required by law to have insurance of some kind without state assistance and regardless of whether their employer provided it.
Thing is, somebody has to pay for those subsidies, and the bill originally had employers who don't insure their workers paying $300 a year for each uninsured full-time employee. (They could add their part-time employees together to come up with whole employees, if that makes sense.)
$300 a year is nothing in the context of insurance premiums. Shoot, if I could find insurance that covered my needs that only cost $300 a year, I'd be insured again. I was paying $300 a month for good insurance long ago when I made more money, and my employer wants me to pay $75 every two weeks to stay on their bad insurance now that I only work part-time, which I have refused to do.
I have a lot of questions about this whole thing, but I agree it's a very encouraging step in the right direction. However, Mitt the Git was pandering to business interests by making our legislature actively and specifically override his line-item veto of the annual fee.
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