Perhaps a Drive to Cancel Insurance Would be the Way

[liberalmike27]

I said this half-jokingly the other day. But it may be more true than I said, maybe all of the supporters of the idea of the single-payer, or watered down public option, should just simply cancel our insurance. If you own a small business, and provide insurance for your employees, then stop providing your insurance to employees, and tell them you can no longer afford it. As the insurance companies call it, go naked.

We all know, there is nothing better to do to corporations than to stop buying their products. They are spending vast money in profits on the campaign to keep the status quo, to keep denying care to people, to keep people dying. Hit them in the only place they will feel it, in the pocketbook. Add to the number of uninsured, until there are, 50, 70, 80 million folks without insurance.

I know there is risk involved. But sometimes you have to make hard choices and suffer to get what you want. With our Congressmen selling out day in and day out, with the insurance companies paying people to go out and disrupt these meetings, in hopes of watering the bill down to where it won't be anything but yet another giveaway to corporations, the biggest danger, the liberals probably rightly will end up killing the giveaway.

I can't believe the larger corporations and schools haven't come out for this plan anyway, but I suspect that is because they are satisfied with either moving to Canada, because they have insurance, or in any case, moving most of the jobs elsewhere anyway, so it really doesn't matter to them. Just what we need, right? More corporations moving jobs overseas, furthering destruction of our economy, more job losses.

So, just cancel your policies, and spread this around as an idea of what to do to combat them. Go naked, in their parlance.

[stray cat]

1. Join the GOP to promote no employer sponsored insurance....

[villager]

2. why is this a half-joke? There will have to be an "insurance strike"

...to rein these leeches in.

If the companies even went 2-3 months without a significant chunk of their "profits" (off both your well-being, and your ailing!) coming in -- what would happen?

[liberalmike27]

6. Well, I guess

I thought it was a half-joke because it is probably such a radical step for a lot of folks. IT would be a huge sacrifice, one where most people will come out all right, but a certain number of people might end up being sick or dying. But that too, flooding the hospitals with free care, would push the thing in the right direction.

The idea is sound. The risk to those who cancel is great. Of course if you pay for it anyway, there is nothing to stop you from opening up an account and depositing the money you pay in premiums. I think you can even get a tax deduction, reducing your before tax income. At least you'd get to keep them money, and make a little interest, instead of the insurance companies doing it, and making the money, then perhaps turning you down when you need them.

I've always thought, imagine if every person who paid premiums, for all the types of insurance they buy, put it into an account, how quickly you'd build up enough money to pay for a funeral, an accident in your car, or health care. True, once and a while someone will get stuck with a huge bill, they haven't accumulated enough to pay. But that happens already, to people with, and without insurance, as 62 percent of all bankruptcies happen because of a medical event, a hospital bill.

[villager]

8. exactly!

:thumbsup:

[Warpy]

3. Larger companies can put the premiums into a pool

and hope none of their employees gets sick enough to drain the pool. Smaller companies have already pulled their insurance benefits. Mom and pop outfits could never provide insurance to employees and some are no longer able to support premiums for Mom or Pop.

The reason for insurance is to protect people against devastating financial loss. Health insurance companies are no longer fulfilling that function as they cheat people out of protection through technicalities that allow them to cancel policies, deny payment, and cap payouts.

For profit health insurance has failed. That's why we're having this debate.

[jody]

5. What Warpy said!

:thumbsup:

[liberalmike27]

7. That is it Dude

what you risk is financial disaster, but that already happens to folks with, or without insurance. Sixty-two percent of all bankruptcies happen because of a medical event.

[Nyquil Man]

4. I've occasionally thought that the only way to get true health insurance reform

would be if the number of uninsured doubled overnight.

That would be a terrible thing. I don't want it to happen. But sweeping reform is difficult in a government that is built on the idea of incrementalism.

[peace13]

9. Make it illegal for government entities to supply their employees with health care.

That would solve your problem right there.