LAT:At what cost?("unimaginable" income share to keep healthcare coverage)

[DeepModem Mom]

At what cost?
To keep health coverage, more workers are cutting back on food, heat and other necessities. Still, many of them eventually will lose the battle.

By Daniel Costello, Times Staff Writer


....As employees continue to absorb more of their healthcare costs, an increasing number of people — even healthy ones — are drastically altering their lives simply to hold on to their insurance. They are delaying homeownership, putting off saving for their children's education, or otherwise sacrificing their financial security to guard against a catastrophic medical bill.

Many people, especially lower- and middle-class workers and the chronically ill, are beginning to spend a once-unimaginable share of their income on health coverage. In some cases, health costs have become the single biggest expense in family budgets.

Between 2000 and 2004, the number of people spending more than 25% of their earnings on healthcare — a figure normally associated with homeownership — rose by nearly a fourth to 14.3 million people, according to Washington, D.C.-based Families USA, a healthcare advocacy group. Over the same period, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, health premiums rose an average of 59%; federal data show the average employee's earnings rose 12.4%....

***

Like the house-rich, cash-poor who stretch their finances to pay for housing, those who are barely holding on to their coverage are increasingly known as the "insured poor." Eventually, many probably will lose the battle, joining the 45 million Americans without medical coverage....


http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-insure4apr04,0,5132674.story?coll=la-home-health

[shoelace414]

1. Didn't you know SS is flat bust in 40 years?

[MO_Dem]

3. Yeah, and besides, gays want to marry

There's all kinds of horrors to keep us distracted!

[iamjoy]

2. Terrible, Terrible

And Clinton tried to do something about it in 1994, but the Republicans killed it.

[CAG]

4. Wake up america!

My health insurance premiums are going up another 15% again this year and now I'm paying $500 a month? Oh, alright....
My credit card is starting to charge $30 for any payment 2 seconds late? Oh, alright....
You're raising my gas to $2.50 a gallon that I pump into my 12 mpg SUV? Oh, alright....
You're going to raise my taxes 5 cents this year??? HELL NO YOU COMMIE SOCIALIST B*ST*RDS!!!!

[leesa]

7. So True! Most Americans are so programed to think this way. Sad

[Media_Lies_Daily]

5. The greed of the insurance companies is "unimaginable".

[NVMojo]

13. please don't forget that it is also the GREED OF THE HEALTHCARE

INDUSTRY!!!! The ones who are on the payor end of the story here!!

[leesa]

6. Just wait...gonna get a lot worse soon. But this is what America wants

We don't want that stinkin' socialist medical care!

Privatization of basic public needs is a DISASTER!

[Atlanticist]

17. From the perspective of a Brit,

I look at your system in slack-jawed amazement. In the 21st century, the world's richest country cannot afford universal health-care coverage!!!

The USA spends 14% of GDP on healthcare and yet 45m people are not covered. Britain, with it's much-maligned National Health Service manages to care for EVERY Brit (including asylum seekers and illegal aliens BTW) at a cost of only 7.6% of GDP.

OK I pay higher Income/Sales/Gas/Property taxes than you guys, but if that's the price to pay for the most needy in society getting decent healthcare, then so be it. Also, the NHS isn't perfect by any means (waiting lists for non-critical operations reached ridiculous proportions until Blair started shovelling money in like there's no tomorrow, and productivity of the health service is VERY poor), but when you compare US healthcare with UK healthcare, I'm glad I'm over here and not over there.

It's a scandal, but as long as the HMO's and Pharma's continue to bankroll politicians, and demonise "Hillarycare", then I don't see how it's ever going to change. Follow the money.....

[shrike]

21. I really have to wonder if they're that much "lower"

Property taxes are rising in many parts of the country, mine included. We have many "hidden" taxes, as well. And what do we get for our money? Not much, other than the chance to feed the neocons' world domination dream.

[Nancy Waterman]

26. the neocons world domination dream- exactly

Way too much money goes for "defense" which is really offense and a way to get resources like oil. Most of that money should go to development of alternative fuels, health care, and industrial development (jobs) not military aggression. I think we should hang up our hats as the world's policemen.

[raccoon]

22. Yeah, and I bet all those who say that

would be/will be singing a different tune when they lose their jobs and their employer-provided group health insurance.

[TahitiNut]

8. People continue to spend more on "recreation," too.

Somehow, I don't think we're talking sandlot. :shrug:

[DBoon]

20. The healthcare curve was flat during the Clinton years!

Wonder what the reason was for that.

I miss the Big Dawg.

[Rose Siding]

9. Could have used more of this kind of reporting last summer.

The papers are really cranking it out now. All Bush ever had to answer it with was "tort reform"

[barb162]

10. it's totally outrageous and it will get far worse over the next 3 yrs

with the shrubster

[bleedingheart]

11. this is starting to happen...

more people are having to make critical choices regarding their coverage...

[NVMojo]

12. the only joy in this is to know that dumb ass Freeper Fundies who voted

for Bush will suffer the same as the rest of us.

Let's hope they remember to kiss the asses of Bush and Frist when they are on their knees crying in pain.

[NNguyenMD]

14. I recently had a conversation about this with a conservative friend and he

said that people should spend within their means.

I hope that this isn't what he had in mind. We're becoming slaves to health insurance companies and any employer who can use it to take advantage of us.

What sad fucking times we live in.

[DBoon]

18. And if you can't afford health care

you should just die.

Unless you are Terry Schiavo of course.

[raccoon]

23. Spend within their means?

Who WANTS to spend megabucks for medical procedures, prescription drugs, etc.

I bet this person has group medical insurance through his/her employer.

What many people don't realize about individual medical insurance is that some people can't get it at all, due to health conditions they already have, and also, if you are lucky enough to be able to afford it, the insurance companies may attach "riders," refusing to cover conditions you already have.

[NNguyenMD]

24. yeah this guy is interesting, he's a real conservative isolationist

and in isolationist I mean a nice way to say xenophobic racist.

But if its any consolation he hates Bush almost as much as the rest of us. This dude is very anti-social programs though.

One of the cards he likes to play in our conversations is his fiance's experiences teaching grade school in the Bronx. This is just total he said she said business, but in their view the money given to education is useless. The city/state/Feds can send millions and millions of dollars to NYC public schools but they won't see any differences because the parents of the children who attend them are too dead beat to keep their children in check.

I mean his fiance is a wonderful woman, and she's brought up many good points too, about how "No Child Left Behind" is basically worthless because so many of these children are so far back academically that there is no way schools can bring their students up to mandated levels that quickly.

I know that their thinking and frustrations are wrong, but I really can't help but feel sorry for her. She did not come into the teaching profession a conservative, but her views have turned more conservative after 2 years teaching in NYC public schools. She's dismayed that the parents of her students can be so neglectful, supposedly stumbling to parent teacher meetings drunk, and buying their children high priced sneakers and videogames but not pencils, papers, and school materials.

Its very complicated, but just to sum it all up. She's seen the worst aspects of an impoverished community that primarily minorities, and has adopted stereotypes and generalization of what she now thinks of them. Again, I can't help but feel very sorry for her for turning this way. I would think that such an experience would motivate someone to support better funding for social services. But apparently in her opinion and my friends, no amount of money can be used to solve these problems nor should they.

I get the feeling that he's always been a racist, and uses her experiences to justify his perception of poor minorities.

[lovuian]

15. we have to go to Socialized Medicine or this country

is going to collapse!!!!!!!

Congress is responsible for this impending disaster!!!

[SoCalDem]

16. My son is one of them..

He was injured in a car accident, had back surgery and is on disability. They took so long diagnosing him, and the need for surgery that he had to pick up COBRA to coontinue his insurance, he pays $289 a month for just him.. He does not dare drop it because he has had complications from his surgery and does not know when he will be released to work again. His disability ends in July,and he is getting desperate.

There is a lawsuit involved, but no one knows WHEN that will get to court, or how much he will get or if he will ever be able to do the work he did before (union carpenter with tip-top benefits)..

He's only 26, and may have a bleak future ahead of him because of medical insurance:(

[DBoon]

19. Our lifespan has been dropping relative to other countries

since 1980 (now who was elected president in 1980? coincidence?).

We had the longest average lifespan. Now for males, we are number 23, next to Costa Rica.

I predict our lifespan will start dropping in absolute terms in a few years, and we wil be seeing an average lifespan that is 3rd world.

Longevity is the "acid test" for the strength of a country's health system

[NNguyenMD]

25. This is the stance of the Institute of Medicine on funding the uninsured

the Institute of Medicine is a very prestigious non-profit organization that provides health policy adbvice under a congrssional charter granted to the National Academy of Sciences.

In Insuring America’s Health: Principles and Recommendations, the committee offers a set of guiding principles, based on the evidence reviewed in the Committee's previous five reports and on new analyses of past and present federal, state, and local efforts to reduce uninsurance., for analyzing the pros and cons of different approaches to providing coverage. The principles for guiding the debate and evaluating various strategies are:

Health care coverage should be universal.
Health care coverage should be continuous.
Health care coverage should be affordable to individuals and families.
The health insurance strategy should be affordable and sustainable for society.
Health insurance should enhance health and well-being by promoting access to high-quality care that is effective, efficient, safe, timely, patient-centered, and equitable.

Although all the principles are necessary, the first is the most basic and important. The principles are intentionally general, which allows them to be applied in more specific operational and political processes. A fact sheet on each of these principles and a checklist of questions based on the principles are available below.

http://www.iom.edu/report.asp?id=17632

[Jose Diablo]

27. An anecdotal example

My wife works for a nursing home providing care for the elderly and also for those nearing the end, Alzheimer's ect.

Now she makes on the average about $1600/month before taxes and subtracted employee paid benefits.

The health medical benefit costs $390/month. Thus after all the deductions her take-home is about $950/month.

Now the health care plan has a very high yearly deductible, about $2500 per year per individual. And after the deductible then the insurance pays 80%. I would say the insurance plan is a piece of shit, but it protects us from catastrophic medical expenses.

Now here is the interesting thing about the 'insurance' plan. It is actually a self-paid plan by the employer. The employer is a crummy corporation based in South Carolina, probably owned by doctors. But the plan appears to be actually a insurance company, but the insurance company is just a administration company with the corporation that owns a string of nursing home paying the claims.

I figured it out. It looks like to me, that after the trumped-up expenses are paid by whatever the claims amount to, what the employees are responsible to pay is pretty much what the health provider charged in total only a few years back.

I suspect the doctors got together and purchased most of the health care facilities and then established so called insurance companies and in effect moved most of the expenses to the employees, either as employee paid premiums or their portion of the deductible in claims.

The whole thing is a scam to screw the workers.

As you may notice, I have a very low opinion of our so called professional people in the generation x. I think by and large, they are bums.

[shrike]

28. "The rich stay healthy, and the sick stay poor."

Courtesy of Bono and U@.