pizoxuat
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Sun Sep-14-08 04:22 PM
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How many of us would be devastated under McCain's healthcare plan? |
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I can count myself as one. I'm a fairly healthy 28 year old, 7 months pregnant with my first child. I am also a thyroid cancer survivor.
The treatments for thyroid cancer don't rank up there in cost compared to other cancers. Enough to bankrupt the working poor with no health insurance, of course, but my insurance covered my $60,000 surgery with only a $1000 copay, and did all of the radiation treatment without any co-pay at all. Even that $1000 hit me hard, earning $25,000 a year as I was at the time.
It was papillary thyroid cancer. One huge tumor in the thyroid that had burst out of the gland capsule and invaded the nearby capillaries, one small tumor in a nearby lymph node. I wasn't in any real danger of death when they caught it. But papillary thyroid cancer is a slow grower. It can show itself again 10-20 years down the road and mutate quickly into a much more aggressive type of thyroid cancer that does not respond to treatment. So you are never completely done with it. I will have to have radioactive body scans for the rest of my life to make sure it hasn't appeared again.
McCain wants to tax what you get from your employer health insurance. Well, not my employer, I am currently unemployed and will be so while my daughter goes through her first years, doing part-time stuff from home if I can find any work that will let me. My husband's employer. He works in the tech industry with a bunch of young and cocksure 20-30 year olds. People who are healthy and feel invincible.
The other half of McCain's health care package is to give people a tax credit if they go with a private insurer instead of with their employer. That'll look very attractive to my husband's co-workers. They will ditch the employer health care plan in droves. That'll push up costs for the few who remain, until either everyone has been naturally driven out or the employer ditches the plan entirely.
Then me, my husband, and our baby girl will be looking for private insurance. For someone who survived a slow-growing cancer that can come back at any time. McCain's tax credit won't even put a dent in our premiums. I'll have to try to find a job that will pay enough to cover full-time childcare AND the increased cost for insurance instead of being home with our daughter. Our quality of life will suffer, and I will feel tremendous guilt over it.
This is not the only reason I support Obama. In truth, I want a single-payer system rather than Obama's plan. But his plan doesn't spell out the ruin of all the plans we've so carefully made ever since I got the horrible call telling me that I need to check into the hospital ASAP for surgery to remove my thyroid.
We call the scar across my neck my second smile. If McCain is elected, I am afraid it'll be the only smile I've got.
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Speck Tater
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Sun Sep-14-08 04:24 PM
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1. I already have NO health insurance. Couldn't possibly get worse. NT |
dkf
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Sun Sep-14-08 04:25 PM
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2. I never thought about McCain's plan beyond the taxing of the |
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benefit itself.
He wants to dismantle employer provided health insurance. What a sickening bastard he is.
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pizoxuat
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Sun Sep-14-08 04:40 PM
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"Employers are complaining that healthcare costs are too high? We'll just force people into private insurance!" It's the same kind of short-sighted uber-capitalist "solution" that I've learned to expect from his party, and it will spell financial ruin for so many people.
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dkf
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Sun Sep-14-08 04:47 PM
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5. I don't understand why Obama hasn't raised this. |
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My only rationale is he is saving it for later.
I also don't understand why your post doesn't get more recommends. This is really really important.
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NotThisTime
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Sun Sep-14-08 04:45 PM
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Either A. My Husbands plan which he currently gets would be taxed (so what would that cost us?)
or worse yet B.
I have adult onset Mitochondrial disease, my costs thus far are well over 300K since diagnosis and I'm only 39. My maintenance therapies cost roughly 15 grand a year now. But disaster could strike at any point.
What insurance company in their right mind would insure me should my DH's company elect not to offer coverage??? Please tell me, I'd really like to know??
Then tell me, who is going to insure my children, who it turns out have the gene but are currently healthy? Course I was healthy until I was 28.... so knowing the history, who would insure my kids even if my life wasn't worth saving? A big fat NOBODY.... Just about everyone loses out under the McCain healthplan...
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goodgd_yall
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Sun Sep-14-08 04:52 PM
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6. I have an income considered moderate, I guess |
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and I get taxed enough. This would screw me, that's for sure.
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JustAnotherGen
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Sun Sep-14-08 04:54 PM
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7. My employer provides it |
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But I look at that as a benefit as OPPOSED to compensation. So working for a company with 67K employees . . . how does this work out?
Well I've learned it's a little under 13K to completely cover me. I have minor co-pays ($10 GP/Oby-Gyn, $15 specialists, $5 prescriptions).
So as a single person - I'm asking myself - where's the other $10.5 K going to come from under McCain's plan. No, it won't kill me - but it chaps my ass. Oy! I better marry my French man quick - not for his wealth - but the access to the French Health Care system. That's what I think. ;-)
Taking myself out of the equation - I think a single woman making a 50K a year under this plan will be crushed. I think your little family will be crushed.
That's why I Obama has to win. He 'gets' it whereas McCain never will.
I'm glad your okay - but the idea of you - an American - having THIS worry - when my government could tax me another 2K a year to make up the difference for you and provide solid health care makes me want to :puke:. In the meantime - McCain wants to go to war. With anyone and everyone.
Americans who need who work hard but need HELP vs. spreading freedom. I'll pick you and your little family any day. :hug:
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fiorello
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Sun Sep-14-08 05:04 PM
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8. Kick! Here are sources with DETAILS of McCain's dreadful health care plan |
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NPR Fresh Air: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93975730 and the New England Journal of Medicine http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/8/781 I also would be personally devastated by the McCain plan. Even if (horrors) McCain is elected the dems in Congress will stop it... but that's no reason to elect a creep who seems to think that if you get sick, it's your own #@## fault. McCain's plan would also prevent states from setting up humane health care systems.
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MichiganVote
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Sun Sep-14-08 05:06 PM
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9. This will make the US unaffordable for us. |
blondeatlast
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Sun Sep-14-08 05:10 PM
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10. We have a choice between a disaster and not quite ideal. I'll take not quite ideal any day. Welcome |
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to DU!
I'm a lifelong insulin dependent diabetic; the prospect of Mccain's taxing health care benefits scares the hell out of me.
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quaker bill
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Sun Sep-14-08 05:31 PM
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Kablooie
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Mon Sep-15-08 10:15 AM
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12. So what's all his lip flap about not increasing taxes? |
Rosa Luxemburg
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Mon Sep-15-08 10:16 AM
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