LAT: Bush Treatment Plan for Healthcare Will Be Self-Help

[DeepModem Mom]

Treatment Plan for Healthcare Will Be Self-Help
The president wants to move away from employer-sponsored insurance and toward workers setting aside their own money.

By Peter G. Gosselin and Joel Havemann, Times Staff Writers


WASHINGTON — President Bush wants to bring to healthcare the same "ownership society" approach that gained him little political traction during last year's Social Security debate but remains central to his self-help view of America.

By proposing new tax breaks for the health savings accounts he won congressional approval for three years ago, analysts said, Bush hopes to nudge the nation away from the employer-sponsored health insurance on which most working Americans depend. Instead, Bush wants to use sweeping new tax incentives to encourage workers to set aside their own money to cover routine medical expenses and get individually purchased insurance plans to meet larger costs.

In his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress and an accompanying news release from the White House, the president put forth a healthcare strategy remarkably similar to the plan he promoted last year to permit younger workers to divert a portion of their Social Security taxes into stock and bond accounts that they would own.

"He is walking down the same road as he did with Social Security," said Robert D. Reischauer, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office and president of the nonpartisan Urban Institute, a Washington think tank. "He wants to shift more of the responsibility and risk now borne by insurance onto individuals."

Bush indirectly acknowledged the link between the two policy prescriptions by calling for a bipartisan commission to examine the problems of cost and coverage that loom for all of the government's major safety net programs with the coming retirement of the baby boom generation....


http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-health1feb01,0,6880489.story?coll=la-home-nation

[Demeter]

1. And we all know--the GOP Helps Those Who Help Themselves to Your Money

If it weren't our lives on the line, it would be mildly amusing.

[undergroundpanther]

2. never trust silver spoon

rich frat boys who never have done without anything,to plan anything for what other people need.

Fuck the rich.They will devour us and shred the social safety net to pickpocket the world. rich people are not to be trusted.That's how I feel about it.

[zann725]

3. How many CAN afford their own, private health plans? Very few these days.

Not that he would "understand" that condition, or really gives a crap.

Which leads me to believe even Medicare will be further "cut" or premiums greatly raised, as will Part "D" medical. After all, who has less power than the sick and elderly?

[shrike]

4. And how the hell will most people do this?

I swear, these people like in frickin' dreamland. How the hell can anybody set aside enough a year to pay their own healthcare costs? Plus pay for retirement. Plus pay the mortgage, the heating bills. Send the kid to college. On freakin' 8 bucks an hour.

OTOH, I know so many people who voted for Bush in my red state I can't feel too sorry for my immediate acquaintances. They wanted him. They got him.

[NanceGreggs]

5. Leading by example ...

Yeah, Bush's plan is great, don't you think?

And here's a good way to set an example for the rest of us: Cut off ALL INSURANCE COVERAGE currently in place for senators, congressmen, etc. Even though they can all afford their own medical expenses much better than the average American, they'll squawk like stuck pigs.

Their outrage will be THE topic of every conversation every time there's a microphone in front of them, or a newspaper interview with them.

And if you REALLY want to see some Class-A crying, get Mrs. Alito in front of a TV camera as you tell her that her husband's new job doesn't offer any health coverage to her or her family!

[Ally McLesbian]

6. Fucking bastard...

There are people who will NEVER get an individual plan, because of a "prior condition." This includes a "mental record" for being incarcerated at a mental asylum, simply for not liking W.

I'm one of those.

[asjr]

7. Just proves he wants all but his corporate

buddies to die!

[shanti]

8. and if you can't help yourself...

basically you're &%$^$ed!

[WinkyDink]

9. Next year, he'll propose "self-help" car-buying plans, self-help food-

buying, self-help teeth-brushing, ....
He's chock-full of initiatives.

[SpiralHawk]

10. "Proles heal thyself" - Dr. AWOL

eom

[kurth]

11. Yeah, try and get an individual health insurance policy!

Unless you're 20 and have never asked any doctor a medical question, chances are they'll find any little thing about you or your family to deny coverage, or give you an outrageous quote.

[FlaGranny]

12. There would be some

multimillionaires who would get a rude awakening if they bought into Bush's scheme. Of course, they won't buy into it, because they can afford the best kind of health insurance. The rest of us will get cheap policies, high deductibles, and daily, yearly, or lifetime limits. One serious illness and everything you worked for is gone. You could put $10,000 a year for 10 years into this health savings plan and not use it one time. In year 11 you get sick, it's all gone, and you could owe at least several times more than what you were able to save. At that point, you can no longer afford even the cheap policy or to put ANYTHING else away for future illnesses.

[sam sarrha]

13. they want to turn the middle class into a nation of shanty town like Rio

so mobs would kill each other to work for a dollar a day.. in a Fascist state the poverty they create doe the under class is a Vice, and the peasants get what they deserve.. slavery

get used to it, it is coming to a neighborhood near you...!!

[ugarte]

14. Ownership Society: "It's your illness. You own it"...nt

[Hekate]

15. Let's all have bake sales for medical care

The middle class is hanging on by its fingernails as it is.

Bush is loathesome. He should come back as a single working mom with a special needs kid.

Or for more immediate justice, he should be forced to live that life for a few years -- kind of like slumlords who get sentenced to dwell in their cockroach and rat-infested apartments until they make them fit for human habitation.

Hekate

[salin]

16. It is potentially more serious-

bush has had a special panel studying "tax simplification" - around this time last year a few of their proposals began to be leaked. One was to end tax incentives to employers to offset the costs of providing health insurance. So while health insurance costs continue to escalate - the bush govt is soon to announce that they will make it even MORE expensive to employers to offer health benefits. How many employers will jump all over the chance to dump insurance costs?

Bushco will try to keep the two issues separate in the public's minds' eye - because taken together it looks pretty insiduous (a direct effort to swell the number of people who are uninsured); instead they will refer to this as a "solution" to escalating health costs - AND a way to address (get this orwellian next statement) the problem of too many people without health insurance.

[gizmo1979]

17. Oh Oh whenever

Bush says ownership society,that means we're getting screwed.I don't understand the savings acct. thing if I have no money to put in a regular savings acct.Where does the money appear for my health savings acct.