Open Thread

Schip is a program for people on medicare and “SHIPs provide free counseling and assistance via telephone and face-to-face interactive sessions, public education presentations and programs, and media activities”. HSA’s are great if you have the money to put in them and if you don’t have much, you won’t be saving much. So no- these 2 plans do nothing for the uninsured such as myself who were covered until our jobs went away. We don’t qualify for medicare or medicaid, SCHIP programs are basically window dressing (as per their website) and HSA’s wouldn’t begin to cover a broken leg unless you could afford to sock away thousands of dollars.

“Contribution limits for 2009 are $5950 for Family, $3,000 for individual, and $1,000 for catch-up contributions.” This is totally laughable. The contribution limit for a family would be gone if 5 minutes with one emergency room visit and follow-up. The whole idea was conceived by people with a great federally funded insurance plan for people with the money to afford it. Still does nothing to address the problem the rest of us have- especially those of us who have worked hard, paid taxes and are even citizens. It was all window dressing and B.S.

NOP,

you’ve got it all wrong.

First, the “47” million uninsured is a canard.
breaking down the figures you get the following;

approx. 15% of these folks are children who would qualify under the state’s SHIP program if the parents took the 10 minutes to apply on line.

approx. 15-20% of these folks are not citizens of this nation, they are citizens of another sovereign nation and are therefore the responsibility of that sovereign nation, cross-reference this fact with California’s current bankrupt medical system for a better understanding of how citizens from other nation’s can become a burden on the medical system.

approx. 15-20% of these folks are working adults who CHOOSE not to purchase health insurance because they simply don’t think they need it. Like all those uninsured motorists on the road for which us insured people have to pay into a pool with our auto insurance premiums to cover. You can purchase major medical insurance for a reasonable amount, comparable to auto insurance.

To summarize, you really only have about 15-20 million truly uninsured people in America. These folks can easily be absorbed under the current medicare/medicaid/SHIP programs, why would we need to re-invent the wheel and restructure the entire medical system to insure them? what’s more, there is a little known alternative which actually works, which rewards people for remaining healthy and not overutilizing the medical system and can be instituted quite easily; it is called the Health Savings Account. Basically a combination of major medical with a pre-tax health savings account. What you don’t use, you keep and continues to grow like an IRA. You are covered by a major insurer like GHI or Oxford and don’t have to worry about breaking a leg. If you remain healthy like most Americans age 15-55, you get to keep the compounding pre-tax monies into retirement. That makes sense.

next point; comparing Sweden to the USA makes no sense at all. Sweden is a nation of 9 million with a negative birth rate and very little immigration. The USA is a nation of 300 million with the largest amount of immigration, legal and not of any nation on the planet. This includes many people who are sick. This means our life span decreases on average, because we take on the poor and infirm from other nations. Any gains made on the national scale by our healthcare standards are diminished by the influx of poorly nourished and poorly treated immigrants. Not to say we don’t have our own problems, but nothing like the endemic conditions of the third world. This means our average height decreases because we accept millions of individuals from Mexico for instance who have a much shorter average height than northern Europeans, just a fact.

We need informed debate to hash out this issue, and don’t even try the race card over this issue folks, it’s not about race or culture or nationality. it’s about applying facts and logic to better serve our children’s future.

Sorry to hear that bxgrl. I’ve been for dinner and weekend brunch many times and never had a service issue. Maybe weekday lunch isn’t geared up and if the crowd was unepectedly large. Glad the food was good.

One of the food issues there is they like to fry their fish well done and dark. If you ask for medium you get it the way like it and very tender.

Er….ENY- that package in the plain brown wrapper your wife found this morning is a gift from me with a printout of all the tips given you on the OT 🙂

My mother was a killer in scrabble. And she seemed like such a nice, gentle sort… except in canasta and scrabble.
———————————
What- I saw it. I was out for awhile (dave- the service at Peaches SUCKS!!!!! Food’s great tho’). and I have no disagreement with you that that piece of trailer trash has no business living in a big City if she can’t handle diversity. I have doubt whatsoever had the officer been Black, she would have said even worse. I would be the last person to deny racism exists, based on my own experiences. FYI- when I went to school upstate I had a few lovely antisemitisms thrown my way.

For that matter when I was with my husband and walking down the street(also Upstate) I had quite a few white folk spit at me and call me N—lover. They’re out there- but they are not going to win.

“Tell her it’s some new vitamins you’re taking! ; )”

Sounds good to me.