Health Plan to Revive Debate (about heavy risk transfer to employee)

[papau]

One more time on the lie that limits on medical malpractice lawsuits solves or even has more than a very minor effect on costs, plus new commpassionate conservative ideas to help the young, the healthy and the affluent like unlimited health cost tax deductions (isn't every expense a health cost in some way?) and a motto "it's up to individuals to make their own deals and bear their own risks," as insurance premiums for the rest of us increase. Thank you Cogan, Hubbard, Kessler, and your book "Healthy, Wealthy and Wise," that wants us to replace health insurance with savings accounts and Hubbard's government subsidies/welfare checks for the old and poor.



:-(

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-health23jan23,0,1261630.story?track=tottext,0,2983381.story?track=tothtml

Health Plan to Revive Debate
Bush prepares initiatives intended to make the system more efficient, but some critics say people would bear too much financial risk.

By Peter G. Gosselin Times Staff Writer January 23, 2006

WASHINGTON — <snip>Among the possible initiatives: offering additional tax breaks for the use of Health Savings Accounts, and making most out-of-pocket medical spending by individuals tax-deductible. Currently, individuals must spend 7.5% of their annual incomes on healthcare before they qualify for an income tax deduction.

Bush's supporters say that the changes would help tame rocketing medical costs by encouraging people to buy their own healthcare insurance and become smarter shoppers, rather than relying on employers or government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid to cover their health costs.

Critics argue that Bush's expected proposals would undermine the employer-provided health insurance system that covers most working Americans. And, they say, it would encourage them to switch to the Bush-authored Health Savings Accounts, established in 2003, under which they would bear more of the financial risks of illness and injury.

Just as with Bush's Social Security personal accounts proposal, the president would be seeking to persuade Americans to rely less on government-provided or employer-provided safety nets and more on themselves.<snip>

"There's no question that the right answer is to repeal the tax exclusion for employer-provided health insurance," Hubbard said. "But there's no chance politically that that will happen."

[Coastie for Truth]

1. Just The Facts Mam

1. Go to the NIH's PubMed search engine at

2. Enter as your search term "Woolhandler" - that's Steffi Woolhandler, MD, a professor of Public Health at Health.

3. Twenty serious, academic, peer-reviewed comparisons of US "for profit" health care and Canadian "sibgle payer, universal" health care:

*

*

*

... and lots more




Don't let them fool you. Just remember - the for profit health insurance mafia gave us Santorum and Frist.

[papau]

2. Excellent source - thanks for the link!

:-)

[Coastie for Truth]

3. Some other authors to look for on the PubMed site

David Himmelstein, MD - Steffi Woolhandler's co-author

Sidney Wolfe, MD - an old time, progressive, health care lobbyist

Elizabeth Warren - Harvard Law School Professor - did the study on serious illness as a contributor to bankruptcy. (and all of the excuses the health insurance industry uses to avoid paying claims)

[papau]

4. Thanks - I went though the Actuarial Health discussions and nothing

by way of actual analysis appears in cut and paste form. Seems the Society and the Academny are keeping their heads down in duck and cover mode.

I suspect they will do a public paper once Bush "ideas" are in the form of an actual bill.