How do you feel about paying for your own insurance plan?

[leftyladyfrommo]

You start with a savings plan when you are born and pay into it every month until you die.

Then when you get sick you just use your own money. Maybe there is a cap on it. Anything over 1 million and the insurance company must chip in.

The insurance companies simply handle the paperwork.

That way big corporations - or all employers - will not have to pay for insurance or pensions (since those are all gone with the wind, too).

[LiberalEsto]

1. What if you are too sick to pay into it?

Then what happens?
What if you're born with birth defects, or a genetic disease.
What if you become disabled at an early age?

[kurth]

3. Then everyone is just an illness away from bankruptcy

[leftyladyfrommo]

4. You still have to pay. No slackers allowed.

Miss a payment and the whole fund goes directly to the government's corporation of choice.

Besides it would be beneficial to all of society if we just let the sick people die. They probably have bad genes, anyway.

You guys - I'm just kidding here.

[applegrove]

2. Why not a shared risk plan that would do the same thing. Except

with no doughnut holes?

[spindrifter]

5. I'm already paying a sizeable chunk

of my health insurance. This is an idea that will take more dollars out of my pocket and leave me with no assurance that I still will not go broke. The employer is walking away with massively more profits as my chicken-sh*t gift. I will never go for this.

[Mz Pip]

6. Anything over $1,000,000?

Who can save that much except for rich people?

I don't mind paying something.I pay something now. I just don't want to lose it if I get sick and some bureaucrat decides to cut me off because of a "pre-existing condition." And at my age it wouldn't be hard to find something that would be considered a pre-existing condition.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[leftyladyfrommo]

7. My cobra payment when I left my last job was $506 a month.

for coverage for one person.

My new cobra payment is about $300 a month. For one person.

And I'm never sick so I never use it. But what if something happened. I would be screwed. So I keep on paying.

Maybe we should just stand sick people up shoot them. It would probably be a relief for them. They wouldn't have to worry about their insurance anymore.

[boobooday]

9. Your jokes aren't funny. n/t

[msgadget]

10. Hey, it could come to that...

I don't mind paying for health insurance. What I mind are high premiums combined with out-of-pocket expenses. Know what I mean? If I'm paying a lot, they should pay a lot and I shouldn't be getting bills from doctors, right? But, nooo, the more I pay in premium, the more out-of-pocket I also pay these days. And, it's NOT because medical care is so expensive, it's because insurance companies are charging more and paying out less. The schedules they use to pay doctors have nothing to do with reasonable and customary or geography. I think they make up the amounts as they go along. How else could they have arrived at $13 as the eligible amount to pay toward a $250 lab bill? And, what's with a co-pay AND deductible AND co-insurance?? Helloooo, what are my premiums getting me except closer to the poor house. And, btw, just where is the poor house? I better start mapping my route in Yahoo!.

But, I'm afraid NOT to pay through the nose for it. I sacrifice to maintain the coverage because, like you, I feel I'd be worse off without it. I could buy a new, low-end car with what I pay in insurance premiums per year. And, my state and federal governments know how much I pay. I saw on my state's website what the average family my size pays and there it was - they know. And, haven't done a damned thing about it.

Phew, I feel better. Thank you.

[boobooday]

8. What if insurance companies won't sell you insurance?

Because you are sick? What if you are what is called "uninsurable," like me?

If we had single payer universal health care, the corporations, and employers, wouldn't have to pay, and people like me could live the American dream. I could become an entrepreneur, something I can't do now.

How about that?

[msgadget]

12. EXCELLENT question

and democrats should be lining up to drag you in front of comeras to highlight the gigantic flaw in this whole HSA fiasco-in-the making. There was a time you could count on Medicaid but now that's so very hard to get and keep and there are deductibles and co-pays now. What if you can't work so you can't pay the co-pay or deductible and then the doctors and hospital won't see you again because you owe them money?

With the auto industry about to approach the president about health care, we might actually have a small chance of getting closer to single payor.

Best of luck to ya,
msgadget

[boobooday]

16. We have to frame it the right way

Frame it as an obstacle to people pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, going into business for themselves, etc.

The cost of health care is the biggest threat to small business and big business alike. It restricts choices for workers, and for employers.

[Nikia]

11. If this is the plan, I would want the insurance comapny out of it

Why should they continue to make a profit if we are on our own? If everyone is responsable for themselves, the doctors would advertise their fees and demand payment up front or allow a payment plan if you would exceed the amount in your account.
I wonder how insurance companies feel about Bush's plan? If people do not benefit much from insurance and employers will not help pay for it, more people may choose or pretty much have to be uninsured.

[FloridaPat]

13. Why not a nickle tax on soft drinks? Candies? diet foods?

We are the only industrilized country without universal health care. How come the rest of the world can do it right and we can't?

And why are out people so sick? Seems everyone I know has a serious disease of some kind.

[boobooday]

17. It isn't money we need

This is from Harpers Magazine:

"Estimated amount the U.S. would save each year on paperwork if it adopted single payer health care: $161,000,000,000."

No additional taxes needed. So much of our health care dollars go to administration and insurance paperwork, we could just reallocate that money and cover everyone.

And the majority of American people support it. But there is no "political will" in Washington, which means that right now the insurance companies are still giving too much money to our politicians.

[stepnw1f]

14. Are You Prepping Us for the GOP Med Plan or What? (nt)

[Lars39]

15. Sounds like an inoculation to me, too.

[SoCalDem]

18. Um.. where do we get the "extra" money?

Unless this "plan" is tied to the employers GIVING the employees CASH each week (the cash he WAS paying for the company's share of insurance), it will just be a transfer of those foregone wages, back intot he boss' pocket, and the employees having to pay for it all, and with no extra money to pay it.

The EMPLOYER part has to come FIRST..

This should have been done DECADES ago.. When there were wage & price freezes, this was a clever way around it, but it created this Frankenstein monster of a health plan we have now. Your employers literally has the power of life and death over you, and he knows it. You are not likeley to bolt for another job if you have decent insurance. This is the leverage they have over those of us with insurance. The insurance comapnies and the corporations created this mess so they would have us right where they want us.. subservient, groveling, and always eager to please the boss..ready to be quiet when we get a $20 raise, but our share of insurance goes up $30.. We just say.,. Thank God I still have the coverage".

I have a feeling that if we opened medicare to everyone in america, and each employed worker paid $100 a month..It would probably work.. The insurance companies would be OUT, so they would fight it like a cornered animal, so don;t look for change that helps us. Remember..what helps the common man, hurts their bottom line..What helps their bottom line, hurts us..

[Yollam]

19. That sounds exactly like what Bush wants.

What's the point of touting his "ownership society" here?

Of course, the only real solution is bringing back the capital gains tax, the corporate taxes, and hiking taxes on the ultra-rich (and making it illegal for them to move their wealth out of the country) in order to pay for single-payer national health care LIKE EVERY OTHER FREAKING CIVILIZED COUNTRY ON EARTH HAS.

[KT2000]

20. This is ridiculous

What happens when medical expenses exceed the money a person has? What happens when one person in the family depletes the fund due to serious illness with expensive treatments, such as a premature baby, transplant, cancer?
The hospital wherre I live is really quick to seize property when patients cannot pay the bill.