I never actually read the magazines that come to my house, but once I saw the cover of Newsweek magazine and Sarah Palin with the caption “She’s one of the Folks” (And that’s the problem) I was tempted to read, but don’t worry, I’m going to enlighten you guys about another major issue in the Presidential Election. (I got some points from “Vetting McCain’s Health Plan” in an issue of Newsweek, for this blog).
So, I was having this discussion with my boss who is about 75 years old and still working fulltime as a lawyer about his health care and how it was going to change once our new President is elected. We both agreed on how health care will never be the same once our new President is elected into office, since both candidates have different views on improving the health care system. Both proposals from the candidates have their positives and negatives.
OBAMA is pushing for more beneficial medical services than before and for FREE. Basically, with these free medical benefits available to almost everyone, these services will become much more impersonal. We are definately not going to see our regular doctor, nor would we have a choice in the type of health care we seek, The positive aspect of this proposal is that we wouldnt have to pay for these services, including surgeries because the government would pay for it. Even though you may think that the government paying for our surgeries is a positive, it is truly not, because having the surgery will no longer become an option for us. Some administrator sitting in the government’s office, will be deciding on if we really need the surgery or not. NO LONGER A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN US AND THE DOCTOR. Just a relationship between the government’s office and the doctor.
McCAIN is not really going to reform medical care as much depending on your age. His plan is simple, he would tax the value of employer-paid health insurance as part of your income and in return, he would give everyone a refundable tax credit- $2,500 for individuals and $5,000 for family coverage. His plan would eventually fall out in a couple of years because of health care inflation, where the overall value of these tax credits will die out. What sucks is that if you are uninsured, you would have to be able to afford the premiums up front and then you would receive the tax credit later on, so the tax credit would let you be able to purchase coverage for the following year. Now I would consider this a good deal if you are in your 20s, 30s, 40s and maybe 50s, but once you hit your 60s and have a modest income, it may be a problem with your rising health concerns. HOWEVERRRRRR, once you hit 65, doesnt Medicare kick in? So McCain’s plan doesnt seem too bad.
Who’s health care proposal would you guys prefer?
If you’re wondering what my boss preferred, he said neither, and told me he was going to take a long vacation of about 4 years, until we find a new presidential candidate with a better health care plan. 😛
Guess I need to find a new job =]
If you did indeed have a conversation with a 75 year old lawyer, then he has been on Medicare for at least 10 years. He would have told you something completely different than what you have written regarding the government managing healthcare.
What you have written about government’s office deciding if you need the surgery is not only false, it is information that does not exist. It is information created out of thin air by the Republican party to try to make Obama’s plan sound bad. If you can find official documentation about Obama’s plan that says government workers will approve medical procedures, then please post it. It does not exist.
I am on Medicare. I go to any doctor I want, whenever I want, including specialists, and the government pays the bill. If you were tricked into signing up for a private insurance company’s Medicare HMO plan, then you could be subject to the approval of the private insurance company. You can opt out of the HMO if you want. There isn’t even a phone number of someone to call for an approval. “Pre-approvals” do not exist. Maybe, for experimental medical procedures?
The government monitors and audits the claims, payments and records of doctors for fraud. The doctor is 101% in charge of deciding whether or not to provide a medical service. Under Medicare, no doctor has been asked to return money for a medical procedure provided to a patient with the reason of “we don’t agree that was a necessary test or procedure.” There is no reason to believe that the government will suddenly operate differently if it paid for more health care.
McCain’s plan for tax credits isn’t necessarily catastrophic. The more people with health insurance, the costs may come down or at least level off, so the idea that the tax credits would die out is yet to be seen. At the very least, why would we presume the government would not raise the tax credit as the years go on?
I have seen two criticisms of McCain’s tax plan: (1) We would be paying a cost plus profit to a company for our healthcare, which means our healthcare costs are inflated by the profits companies need to make – and their denying your claims is a way to keep their profits high; (2) As you note, you would have to be able to afford the premiums up front, but many, many healthy people who can afford medical insurance premiums will forgo them to keep the cash in their pocket.
A lot of people don’t understand this, but health insurance is only necessary when you have assets to protect. If you do not have money in the bank (more than $2500) or if you do not own a home, it usually does not make financial sense to have health insurance. You will be able to get any emergency health care you need without regard to cost, and there is emergency medicaid for those who cannot afford a very high bill, plus hospitals negotiate enormously with patients. Isn’t our student health plan something like $600 a month? That means if you will not spend more than $7200 in regular medical expenses, then you do not buy health insurance. Even if you saw a psychiatrist once a month for $150 per visit and took Prozac 365 days a year… You’re looking at something like $3,000 in medical expenses. You would not buy health insurance. A routine doctor’s visit plus a prescription for a seasonal type illness would be ~$250. This is not a reason to have health insurance.
I know I did not understand the medical insurance issue for a long time, my parents were insane about making sure they had health insurance, but as a young single adult, it was not necessary and it caused me a lot of excessive worry. Our parents made a big deal about health insurance because they had to take care of us kids, and they needed to make sure some accident didn’t mean they lost all their money or the hospital put a lien on their home. Kids get sick, so our parents wanted health insurance for US. NYS Laws require a hospital give you full fledged medical care in an emergency without regard for ability to pay. There are plenty of places you can go with sliding scale fees.
Every hospital gladly accepts payment plans and I have heard of at least a dozen people who negotiated hospital bills to a fraction of their original value. I once heard a girl got so scared by her hospital bill that she put the bill on three different credit cards and never recovered her credit from it. The hospitals are so accommodating that there is simply no reason to use credit cards to pay hospital bills.
It’s too bad we didn’t spend $700 billion to buy up health insurance companies.
I completely agree with you…AND yes, I did have a conversation with my boss, Friday morning, regarding his health care. He is on Medicare but chooses not to use the benefits and just pays out of his own pocket for his own medication because that’s his way of life, it’s his decision. More power to him. =]
What we had discussed are the possible outcomes of these plans, not saying it IS going to happen, but with everyone having free health care, do you actually think you are going to be able to see your own doctor at your own convenience? I remember my ex having to visit the clinic with his little book with all of his information on that booklet, regarding what kind of work was done previously, including his previous dental work and the notes scribbled by the physicians; he really didn’t have a choice in who he would see, it was on a first come first serve basis. Now of course, he would never pay for anything that was done, and he never paid a single fee even when he had to get a Cat scan, but the thing was, he had NO CHOICE, he was to go to this certain hospital and have the scan there.This is what I was thinking about when writing my comment, are we still going to have a choice when these new health care reforms kick in?
Dental insurance is another thing, some dental work are considered luxuries, but having some of these procedures is up to someone sitting in some administrative office deciding on if we should have the procedure or not. If they give us a limit, why shouldn’t we be able to choose what kind of work we would like done, since some of us don’t even use up the given amount for the year. Let’s just have rollover for dental insurance too, no? =]
You may say health insurance is not necessary, but you are living in New York, and there are people in other states who don’t have these kind of laws for emergency health care, and can’t afford a single procedure. I wouldn’t want to waste my dollars on health care either, if I don’t use it, why pay for it and let it go to waste. But why is everyone looking for a job with decent health insurance benefits and overlooking the ones that don’t have these type of benefits? WHY WHY WHY
It’s so weird to read the different opinions on medicate and what it can possibly offer us in the future. I do agree with Rob that when mu mother recieved medicate, there were no limitation on who you saw and where, but as the years go on I seen how medicate has began to be limited; for example now I think that you have to combine another insurance with medicate and that there were certain terms that had to be met before having the priviledges of medicate without another combine insurance.
Sorry about that, I press the send buttom before I was done with my comment. But anyway I can understand ytashkent point about the ability to offer that type of medicate to everyone unless there are trendmendous changes in the way America budget is done. The president who gets into office have to first dig us out of a whole, before the budget can truly focus on health care. I do think that Obama’s way of handing this concern is done with the people in mind and McCain is done with the interests of the business who will profit.
I believe that McCain’s plan sound better but how do we know that it will happen. There is no guarantee that this plan will work how he says it will. But let’s just hope it will because I really don’t want to involve the government into my medica decisions more than it already is.
I have no idea what country your boyfriend is from because you don’t state it. I suggest you see Michael Moore’s film, “Sicko” because it will enlighten you about universal healthcare.
In this post, you are stating opinion and hearsay as factual information, and I am trying to give you information that says “that stuff you heard just doesn’t sound right.” Obama is not presenting anything in his healthcare plan that says you will get free healthcare but you will have your choices limited. First, it is not plausible that he would go around saying that while he’s elected president. Second, he has never said it. If you believe what you hear, that’s fine – you might say, “I agree with people who say it will cause us to have limited choices…” but that’s not how you presented it, and to add emphasis, you added capital letters in bold print. Why you extended the argument to “NO LONGER A RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN US AND THE DOCTOR” I’m not sure. Even when you have crappy insurance, you and your doctor work together to get things done. There is no basis for such an extreme statement.
I am telling you that I have Medicare and I go to whoever I want, whenever I want. The only requirement is that the doctor must accept Medicare as a form of insurance.
I will add now that I have had Medicaid and I go to whoever I want, whenever I want. The only requirement is that the doctor must accept Medicaid as a form of insurance.
The number of doctors that accept Medicaid is much lower than the number of doctors that accept Medicare. In both situations though, I always chose my provider and facility.
Currently, I have Medicaid and Medicare. Medicaid pays whatever Medicare doesn’t. Except for one doctor, every doctor who accepts Medicare also accepts Medicaid for the co-pays. However, many of those doctors don’t accept Medicaid by itself, because the fees that Medicaid pays are much lower than Medicare. Still, everything is taken care of, I never contact anyone – I couldn’t if I wanted to, there is nobody to contact – to get approval for anything. If the doctor deems the procedure necessary, it gets paid for. Done.
So from the previous paragraphs, I am telling you that there is 33 years of precedent to believe that the government will not approve your procedures. If you want to believe otherwise – if you think it is likely that this will change – fine, but again, it is not fact and just because McCain’s campaign and McCain himself say it, does not make it true. (33 years = 2008 – 1965, when Medicare was established.)
McCain and his campaign made up the idea that the government will be involved in your healthcare decisions in order to counter the basic idea being presented by Obama. Again, there is no evidence or precedent to believe this will be true. Let’s not be so willing to be fearful, especially since universal healthcare is a long ways away, still.
Since it’s not obvious, McCain’s plan is not sound for today’s times. In these economic times, people simply cannot afford to lay out the money for health insurance to wait to get it back in a tax credit. Also, people are just too screwed financially and will choose to pay the mortgage, buy gas, and put food on the table before they will pay for health insurance. How many not-sick people do you know would spend $600 on insurance and not use that money to live?
If you have any questions at all about government programs, feel free to ask, I will be happy to talk to you.
Rob
Sorry I meant to say:
First, it is not plausible that he would go around saying that while he is running for president.
oy.
As a fellow blogger I like to take the time to let people know when I visited their site. If you could show me the same love at my blog I’d really appreciate it 🙂