Health Reform Bill Includes Major Changes for Seniors

Why would employers provide health benefit?

A government insurance program will lead to more employers eliminating their health plans. Good or bad, there is little to motivate any employer to maintain these types of benefits. They are already exiting their pension plans. They are already reducing / eliminating their 401K plans or any contributions. And one has to ask, why shouldn't they do these things? All of these benefits just add risk and cost to their businesses. It is much simpler for employers to hand it all over to the government for the proposed 8% tax and be done with it. This would reduce their cost to pay and providing a safe work environment for the employees. I know some will say this isn't right because for the past 50 years people have gotten used to employers providing many benefits but the rest of the world does not do these things (at least those that the US competes with) and so in a global world economy, they make no sense to continue. The government has made it clear it will run it all anyway, intervene whenever it sees a threat, and decide how private industry will operate. Industry will pause for a bit but then realize they have a great out and that is to push it all to the government and create lean companies leaving anything more than the basic relationship for compensation in place. What is to stop them and why should they stop?

Mike of CA @ Jun 22, 2009 17:57:28 PM

The estimates with 'no employer mandate and an individual mandate'

As we know, the public option currently being discussed is modeled after Massachusetts Plan, under which about 97% of all Massachusetts residents are now covered. However, in recent estimates, CBO left out two crucial features, including a 'public health insurance option' and 'employer mandate and an individual mandate'. The estimates with 'no employer mandate and an individual mandate' ended up with 36 million uninsured.

By contrast, in case the proposed provisions with respect to the strong public option, medical IT, increased efforts in prevention, and a broader array of cost-saving plans and beyond add to the Massachusetts Plan with the provision of employer mandate and an individual mandate, the cost containment does not matter at all. And most importantly, the promising stem cell research is making its way.

To date, private insurers have coexisted profitably with Medicare and Medicaid for many years.

Basically, healthy society leads to better productivity and better performance.

hsr0601 @ Jun 21, 2009 03:25:18 AM

Sorry For Your Painful Ordeal

Dear Deborah Calvert...so sorry for your loss! It is a scary world for the elderly these days. I was a nurses aide for many years, working with the elderly and I loved them. The older folk have so much to offer and yet I think this younger generation does not appreciate this fact. It is easier and more cost effective to let the elderly "go" than to cherish them and portect them as they deserve. Good luck with your family in the future. My heart is with you.

One who is reaching that "age".

Lynne Schaf of FL @ Jun 20, 2009 12:11:23 PM

Healthcare crisis

AMERICA’S NATIONAL HEALTHCARE EMERGENCY!

It’s official. America and the World are now in a GLOBAL PANDEMIC. A World EPIDEMIC with potential catastrophic consequences for ALL of the American people. The first PANDEMIC in 41 years. And WE THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES will have to face this PANDEMIC with the 37th worst quality of healthcare in the developed World.

STAND READY AMERICA TO SEIZE CONTROL OF YOUR NATIONAL HEALTHCARE SYSTEM.

We spend over twice as much of our GDP on healthcare as any other country in the World. And Individual American spend about ten times as much out of pocket on healthcare as any other people in the World. All because of GREED! And the PRIVATE FOR PROFIT healthcare system in America.

And while all this is going on, some members of congress seem mostly concern about how to protect the corporate PROFITS! of our GREED DRIVEN, PRIVATE FOR PROFIT NATIONAL DISGRACE. A PRIVATE FOR PROFIT DISGRACE that is in fact, totally valueless to the public health. And a detriment to national security, public safety, and the public health.

Progressive democrats and others should stand firm in their demand for a robust public option for all Americans, with all of the minimum requirements progressive democrats demanded. If congress can not pass a robust public option with at least 51 votes and all robust minimum requirements, congress should immediately move to scrap healthcare reform and demand that President Obama declare a state of NATIONAL HEALTHCARE EMERGENCY! Seizing and replacing all PRIVATE FOR PROFIT health insurance plans with the immediate implementation of National Healthcare for all Americans under the provisions of HR676 (A Single-payer National Healthcare Plan For All).

Coverage can begin immediately through our current medicare system. With immediate expansion through recruitment of displaced workers from the canceled private sector insurance industry. Funding can also begin immediately by substitution of payroll deductions for private insurance plans with payroll deductions for the national healthcare plan. This is what the vast majority of the American people want. And this is what all objective experts unanimously agree would be the best, and most cost effective for the American people and our economy.

In Mexico on average people who received medical care for A-H1N1 (Swine Flu) with in 3 days survived. People who did not receive medical care until 7 days or more died. This has been the same results in the US. But 50 million Americans don’t even have any healthcare coverage. And at least 200 million of you with insurance could not get in to see your private insurance plans doctors in 2 or 3 days, even if your life depended on it. WHICH IT DOES!

Contact congress and your representatives NOW! AND SPREAD THE WORD!

God Bless You

Jacksmith – WORKING CLASS

jacksmith of TX @ Jun 20, 2009 02:42:06 AM

Medicare and Medicaid

I believe we must be very wary of changes to Medicare and Medicaid. Obama has indicated a tendency towards long term funding cuts in these programs. This in is keeping with the marxist notion of equality. The fundamental idea is to reduce benefits for the elderly since they are reaching an age of decreasing returns from standard treatments. Those treatments that have some chance of success are based on the latest technology, and therefore are likely to be very expensive. The "progressives" would rather let the elderly expire instead of taking money that could be used for funding the treatment of younger and more productive groups within society. An implicit attitude of geriatric genocide is emerging. In other words, since it is cheaper and more expedient to let grandma die at age 85, why spend the money to keep her alive until age 90. After all, the old gal is not likely to "produce" anything to justify her upkeep. This takes away from the perverted ideal of "progressive equality." Furthermore, killing grandma might even become a social duty. Never mind the heartbreak of the grandchildren. The elderly have little to offer by continuing to exist. ---So goes the tacit reasoning of the liberal elite. After all, we must have learned by now that moral considerations are all relative. The absolutes of Christian morality are believed only by fundamentalist and other fools. May God save us from these marxist idiots.

Jerry D. Johnson of TX @ Jun 19, 2009 17:05:53 PM

Public Health Care Plan

Public HEalth Care is a bottomless pit of expense. It is a big mistake. Other countries that have it have realized what a huge mistake it is. It costs trillions of dollars to insure a few millions of people. Aren't our present public health care programs - social security, medicare and medicaid an example of the American public paying taxes that are taken by the Government and spent ad nauseum on whatever and then being told the program is bankrupt. The US budget is already over by trillions and the American taxpayer is alreay burdened by those same trillions. Do not add more trillions in this huge bottomless expensive mistake.

Catherine Adams of AR @ Jun 19, 2009 17:04:22 PM

Crucial Understanding

Medical care cannot deliver healthcare for two reasons:

1. The doctor can’t eat for you or quit smoking for you. What we put into our mouths takes us from 6 or 8 pounds at birth when we were healthy to 150 or 250 pounds in 40 or 50 years. If we have a problem, we did it to ourselves. We can reverse the process, but it takes time and we are impatient. Thankfully, our bodies are designed for self-healing. Heart

disease, high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes are reversible if we know how to cooperate with the body’s healing mechanism. Nathan Pritikin showed this in the 1970’s; echoed by the cover story of US News & World Report, 8-6-1990.

2. Unless you want surgery, medical care uses drugs. The science of drugs is pharmacology, formerly called toxicology when they determined how much of a chemical would kill 50% of the rats. The rules have changed, but the game is similar. People should ask their pharmcist for a list of adverse effects of their prescription. Otherwise when they become toxic to the

chemical and get “headache, diarrhea or abdominal pain” [purple pill], they think they need a second prescription when they really need to get rid of the first one. Taking a prescription to cover up the toxicity of another drug puts them in a dangerous position. The list of drug effects is usually long, hard to understand, and more severe than people expect. It’s safer as Hippocrates said, “Let your food be your medicine.”

Supporting the idea of reversing disease by diet is Salvatore

Frascinella. He was a 65-year old executive with three cardiologists who felt he was too risky for bypass surgery, so they had him taking 12 pills a day, but he was getting worse. He couldn’t walk two blocks without severe chest pain. Desperate, he attended a seminar series and in eight weeks he was off all of his drugs and was starting to play tennis again.

That was 26 years ago. He’s alive and has done well with no drugs, now at 91, he says, “You saved my life!”

Healthcare is simple. It results in freedom from medical care.

Medical care is complex and it results in bondage to a system in which there are few cures. Understanding the difference means either self-government or BIG government.

Unfortunately the majority have little self discipline and have been educated by TV ads to believe all they need to do is ask their doctor not realizing that www.LeadingCauseOfDeathPrescriptionDrugs.com

Richard Ruhling, MD, MPH, retired

Board-certified in Internal Medicine

Assist. Prof. Health Science, Loma Linda Univ.

Richard Ruhling, (retired MD) of MD @ Jun 19, 2009 16:45:48 PM

The devil is in the details

Age-rated premiums for older people that could cost as much as five times that for a younger person are not acceptable. Everybody gets old eventually. Don't allow corporations to set you up to be fleeced.

THIS kind of stuff is WHY you must have a public plan option. Your politicians could not and would not ever dream of trying to sell such a "gotcha" thing to voters.

As for electronic records, BEWARE of being required to sign that you "hold harmless" providers for actually relying on your portable record or for putting false information into it. This will be coming unless someone outlaws it.

Muser of NM @ Jun 19, 2009 13:24:10 PM