More Support for Health-Care Fix

[cal04]

Source: Washington Post

But Funding Coverage Still Sticking Point
The fault lines are emerging in the upcoming battle over health-care reform.

Recent movement on Capitol Hill and by major health-care players suggests that consensus is growing for action this year, but deep rifts remain over how to pay for expanded coverage and whether a new government-sponsored program should be offered to people who have trouble buying private insurance.

A coalition of hospitals, insurers, employers, physicians, drug makers and consumers released a report yesterday endorsing a set of policy changes that could cut in half the number of uninsured Americans.

Most notably, the group, known as the Health Reform Dialogue, calls for creating an "individual mandate" that would require every American to have some type of health coverage. Anyone who cannot afford insurance would be eligible for subsidies or expanded government programs such as Medicaid.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/27/AR2009032702951.html?hpid=topnews

[rockymountaindem]

1. Cut in half? Awesome!

Then we'll only have, what, seventeen million people with NO care at all? Sounds like a solution to me!

[DJ13]

2. require every American to have some type of health coverage

Why cant they just put a 2% tax on all net business profits to pay for a real single payer system that covers everyone and stop thinking they can force individuals to pay out of their ever smaller paychecks?

[dflprincess]

3. I like your idea

Cutting the number of insured sounds like a good idea but that still leave 20 some million uninsured and God knows how many underinsured.

And Medicaid? These are the current monthly income limits for full Medicaid coverage:

http://www.charmeck.org/Departments/DSS/Services+for+Se...

"The income limit for full Medicaid is $798 for a single person and $1070 for a couple. If income exceeds these limits, the individual or couple must meet a medical deductible before he is eligible for full Medicaid. The deductible is the amount of income over the income limit. A deductible can be for 1, 2 or 3 months before the month of application or for a period of 6 months beginning with the month of application."

[glinda]

4. I would like to drop my health insurance and pay less. I do not work and cannot but would like

to pay less if possible. I hope there is an option for me.

[newfie11]

5. Here we go again, NOTHING CHANGES!!

"It is striking, she observed, that the Health Reform Dialogue and influential lawmakers have all but ruled out the prospect of a European-style single-payer system, opting instead to build on the existing employer-based insurance arrangements"

[PSPS]

6. "coalition of hospitals, insurers, employers, physicians, drug makers and consumers"

A coalition of hospitals, insurers, employers, physicians, drug makers and consumers released a report yesterday endorsing a set of policy changes that could cut in half the number of uninsured Americans.

Gee, with a 'coalition' like that, what could possibly go wrong? Notice how they throw in the very people needing health care as mere "consumers." You'd think they were talking about a 'coalition' for marketing toothpaste.

[area51]

7. "individual mandate"

GingrichCare, which is a law to force people to buy rightwing, for-profit, pro-death, health scam-insurance IS NOT THE ANSWER. I'm goddamed tired of congressional moneyed elites having healthcare most of us can only dream about. They have no idea what it's like to be poor and without healthcare. Time to pull the plug on health scam insurance agencies with single-payer healthcare.

[subterranean]

8. I'm worried how they would define "some type" of health coverage.

What if the only policy you can afford covers virtually nothing and has a $10,000 deductible? Would that qualify as some type of coverage?

[avaistheone1]

9. Looks like the coalition of people working for single payer have been left

out of the Health Reform Dialog group. Health Reform Dialog <---- I would call that a misnomer on all counts especially by that particular coalition.