America's Best Health Insurance Plans
If your company stumbles, what happens to your health coverage?
Reader Comments
health democracy
Co-op health financing contributes to the campaign for MediCare for All by establishing truly nonprofit self-financing plans for the un-insured. http://www.healthdemocracy.org Members of the Ithaca Health Alliance are covered for 12 categories of everyday emergency anywhere in the world, to specified maxima, for $100/YEAR. http://www.ithacahealth.org
Health Ins Costs
Free insurance for all, great, where does it end, doesn't everyone deserve to eat too, shouldn't food be free...Give me a break. Free equals more lazy unproductive people. There needs to be a fine line between access and accountability and costs. Besides nothing is free, you just want someone else to pay your fare.
Republican or Democrat, none of them are any good at running government programs, costs will go way up putting a huge tax burden on our populace. Just look at how bad my State of California has managed our economy way before the mortgage crisis, they keep spending and spending.
Taking care of an elderly parent
Scene:
1. Give up your job to take care of an elderly parent, so the parent can stay at home
2. Stay on Cobra, until you can't afford it
3. Take insurance in your home state
4. Sit back and figure out what to do when the insurance company raises your rates, just because you are another year older. Imagine this: you take no meds (even your parent at an advanced age has only recently started on meds and only two); you are in excellent health; you are a non-smoker.
We need affordable health care for everyone and not only employer-based!
Why is insurance tied to our jobs
Michelle Andrews correctly notes that losing your job in today's poor economy can also mean losing your medical insurance. It's important to remember why: the tax exemption for employer-provided insurance. This also creates many other problems with American medicine.
Employees who forgo employer-sponsored insurance to buy their own policy face a stiff tax penalty. Hence, employees are essentially stuck with their employer's plan. Insurance companies know this, and can afford to offer shoddy products and customer service that wouldn't survive in a free market.
Tax-subsidized insurance also increases medical costs by encouraging us to overinsure and rather than pay for medical care out-of-pocket. Our "insurance" is really prepaid health care. We consume medical care like a business traveler dining on the company’s expense account: Since someone else pays the bill, patients need not shop around and providers don’t compete on price.
Yet President-elect Obama boasts that his health care plan "strengthens employer-based coverage." That's not the "change we need" in Washington.
MARK AND SUE WERE NOT THE ONLY ONE'S THAT SUFFERED A BIG FINANCIAL LOSS BECAUSE OF TRAC. INC OUT OF WISCONSIN. MY HUSBAND DAVE HAD A STENT PUT IN, THANKING GOD WE HAD INSURANCE, ONLY TO FIND OUT 2 DAYS LATER, YEAH, WE PAID THE PREMIUM, $95.00 DOLLARS A WEEK PREMIUM ONLY TO BE TOLD, MR. HINTZ THE OWNER NEVER PAID THE INSURANCE COMPANY.. BECAUSE OF JOHN WE OWE 70.000 DOLLARS IN MEDICAL BILLS. ONLY OPTION-------BANKRUPTCHY!!!!!!!THANK YOU JOHN!!!!!!!!!!YET HE IS DRIVING A BRAND NEW BMW.........YOU GO FIQURE........THE BEER'S MINNESOTA
outrageous health care
file reorganization bankrupty, keep your house/car, so what if you get bad credid report. are you going to live that long to need it. Besides, the emotional blackmail of bad credit report is just that, so you feel badly. Atleast you have a conscious and morals/ethics to pay your bills unlike the greedy/avarice CEO's, bailouts and other narcissitic CEO's, scammers who count on everyday people to meed their extravagant needs. They are laughing all the way to the bank and their big mansions with their snobbery, insolence, Well illness affects anyone, anytime. And money won't keep you alive, no matter what...
needed help and got nothing
My husband switched jobs early last year and as a result we were without insurance for a few months until the new insurance kicked in. We could not afford to buy insurance and because of our income we did not qualify for assistance. During this time my daughter got sick and was in ICU for 5 days. We now have about 60,000 in medical bills and can not get help anywhere. People think just because you make a decent living you dont need help too. We are paying what we can a month but they are trying to take legal action now. We might lose our house and our sanity in the process.When we went to the hospital for help the woman in charge shook her head and said," Your on your own now one is gonna help you." She was right we keep trying and get that same answer every time.
FREE INSURANCE FOR ALL
Why medical insurance is not free for all of us??
Instead of spending so many billions at NASA why can't we use that money on keeping a nation of healthy and happy citizens ??
I am desperate!!
The company my husband worked for 30 years went bankrupt but he was covered by the priorm owner everything was fine at the beginning but now that we need it the most they are dipping into his pension because a loop hole that allows them to do this. In the mean time the pension went from $1500 a month to $1000. and the next two months will wipe us out
