yeah, it seems like oopsycare, unless you start looking at what the goals REALLY are. Look at what the endgame is, and then work backwards. They didn't need to read it to know that eventually most employers will drop their internal insurance, and let 'em eat cake... even if it's a mud cake [if we are lucky].

what employer is going to keep the overhead of having to deal with private insurance, including the computer systems, admins and lawyers, if the govt will do it?

From the lefty perspective: "we are the richest country in the world, we can afford to give everyone healthcare!"

she got strangely quiet after that.

yeah, it seems like oopsycare, unless you start looking at what the goals REALLY are. Look at what the endgame is, and then work backwards. They didn't need to read it to know that eventually most employers will drop their internal insurance, and let 'em eat cake... even if it's a mud cake [if we are lucky].

what employer is going to keep the overhead of having to deal with private insurance, including the computer systems, admins and lawyers, if the govt will do it?

From the lefty perspective: "we are the richest country in the world, we can afford to give everyone healthcare!" THIS from a person who most certainly pays no taxes. I told her that I didn't mind paying for her so much, but at least everyone should be truthful about what's going on.

she got strangely quiet after that.

huh, that was strange, sorry for the double post.

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act has to be repealed or incredibly amended before we can see any progress in health care reform. More than half of all emergency room costs in America go unpaid and written off, which means the burden is shifted over to those of us who actually pay our bills and have insurance.

We have a black sheep family member who goes to the emergency room several times a year for anything and everything, and never has any intention of paying a dime towards the costs. I know this because she uses our home address as her own for billing purposes, even though she has never lived here a day.

health care should have been untied from employment

Really, it never should have been tied to it in the first place, I think.

"health care should have been untied from employment

Really, it never should have been tied to it in the first place, I think."

Health care still isn't tied to employment.

Health insurance is somewhat tied to employment but only if you have an expensive pre existing condition that insurance companies know that they will go broke covering if they issue you a policy.

Insurance companies used to be able to tailor policies that were affordable by excluding certain conditions that they knew up front would be automatic losers. However, state laws mandating that insurance companies cover damn near everything, even in-vitro fertilization and kidney transplants, meant that the only entities that could afford these expensive mandated policies was government itself, or large businesses who could spend pre tax dollars on insurance for their employees and write it off.
Back in the day when the top income tax rate in this country was close to 90 percent, companies were looking for a benefit they could give their employees that would not be taxed away by the government. Health insurance seemed like a good bet before the states started mandating what those policies had to cover, and the prices started spiraling out of control because of tort liability and government picking up only a very small part of the real cost for medicare and medicaid patients.

"Health care absofuckinglutely is tied to employment because health insurance is. A friend cannot leave her job because she got Crohn's disease, and has employer-provided health care. We used to have lifetime jobs. Now many of us are lifelong freelancers and people who work for companies tend to move from company to company. Starting afresh with health insurance is untenable, especially if you have a disease or health condition of some sort."

I stand by my earlier statements. Has your friend never heard of COBRA? Also transferring to another employer under most situations would not allow the new employer to exclude her Crohn's in their health plan.
If she ran out of everything else and was unemployed she would soon be eligible for medicaid, (or medicare, if she was totally disabled) and would STILL have access to medical treatment, but now at total tax payer expense.
You should also read up on Crohn's. Advanced medical treatment is doing very little for it, although hookworms seem to be very effective in many people. It is another disease they are starting to believe is autoimmune and most likely diet and too clean an environment, and lack of exposure to parasites particularly as a kid, is the main cause since people in underdeveloped countries almost NEVER get it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helminthic_therapy

Obaminationcare.

SFAIK, its my word. But I'll let you use it anytime you want.

Amy, it seems quite apparent that as usual, in your haste to prove me wrong, you have totally missed my point so I will repeat it for the benefit of the other readers who might have a slight interest,

First, your friend can get COBRA to tide her over to a new job and all she will have to do is pick up the portion of her medical insurance that her current employer now pays in addition to her own co pay.

She could also get an individual policy at a reasonable rate if the State of California (or wherever she lives) had not passed so many mandates as to what insurance MUST cover that the price for almost any individual policy is out of reach.

Second, this was not really about what causes Crohns, the point was, that because it is diet and immune system related, the stuff she can do ON HER OWN is more likely to be effective than letting the doctors chop out pieces of her colon one chunk at a time at great personal and medical expense.
Doing less or nothing but watching her diet might actually lead to a better quality of life for her.

In my opinion, insurance now pays for way more than it should rather than too little. If you get caught up in the medical machine, you will often find a doctor that is more than willing to literally torture you to death on your own or your insurance company's dime. I have recent experience with this, as my mother has gastric cancer.

That torture will appear in the form of treatment protocols and drugs that have been shown in studies to be just barely more effective in a large control group than doing nothing.

If you want to understand how in the past doctors and scientists have just blindly thrown treatments at conditions in the hopes that something might stick you should read "The Emperor of All Maladies" a very good book on the treatment of cancer through history.

However the medical profession and big pharma is a master at public relations. They have convinced the majority of the American people that what they are selling is absolutely critical to their health and well being which is why when you walk into a doctors office with a viral infection like the common cold, 90 percent of Drs will immediately throw antibiotics at you.

If you walk in with even slightly elevated cholesterol or blood pressure, their answer will be, take these five pills, and then a few more to control the side effects from the first five pills, instead of telling you to get off your three hundred pound ass, lose some weight, and stop eating crap.

And yes, the biggest problem with carbs is that they are mostly crap unless you are working hard enough to burn them off.

My father in law, who owns his own business, would love to buy private insurance. No one will cover him, and he has been trying for over a decade. His pre-existing condition is having the nerve to be over 50. Other than that, he is completely healthy.

The Affordable Health Care Act immediately increased costs and reduced coverage available to Blue Cross, Blue Shield clients, and they duly reported that as required by law.

The "jobs President" doesn't seem to realize that it suppresses hiring when you do stuff like that.

I want to suggest anyone reading this to view the feedback above complimenting this story to point out how ridiculous it could possibly be.