Are you more afraid of losing your health insurance or being in a terrorist attack?

[LucyParsons]

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/85947/

More Americans Fear Losing Their Health Insurance Than Being in a Terrorist Attack

By Ezra Klein, The American Prospect. Posted May 21, 2008.


If health insurance were cheap, we could all buy it. If universal health care could get 60 votes in the Senate, we'd all have it. But these two imperatives -- the need to control costs and the need to attract the 60 Senate votes required to overcome a filibuster -- point in opposite directions. This is the central paradox of health reform.

The most intractable policy problem is not, fundamentally, the 47 million uninsured or the fact that insurers have a business model right out of Dickens. It's cost. In 2006, the average family policy cost $13,600. This is why one out of six Americans are uninsured; they can't afford the premiums. An October 2007 Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that more Americans were "very worried" about being priced out of their health insurance than feared losing their job, their house, or being in a terrorist attack. And with good reason: Premiums have gone up 98 percent since 2000. Wages have not.


(snip)

[dubeskin]

1. Terrorists attacking before November

And it throwing the election to McCain. The chances of being in a terrorist attack are so low...

I'd be much more worried about losing my health care insurance.

[pitohui]

2. if i die by terrorists, my family will be taken care of, but if my insurance won't pay they're toast

every day i worry about my health and about costs, i can't say the same about the terrorists

because i fly a lot, i do have to think about terror precautions but at the end of the day, if i'm killed by a terrorist, it will probably be a financial benefit to my family (many 911 families got huge settlements) whereas if i keep getting sicker and older, then my family could be financially destroyed and not have the future i would want for them

but you knew what i would say, because it's what almost all of us are thinking, right?

[kdmorris]

3. No health insurance

I would be dead without it.

[Forkboy]

4. Terrorists with health insurance.

Think of the risks they'd be willing to take with good coverage. :scared:

[Solly Mack]

5. You mean they don't hate us for our health care?

No contest...I actually do worry about health care

[AlCzervik]

6. health insurance no doubt.

[madeline_con]

7. Who am I attacking? n/t

[elocs]

8. Neither. I don't believe in living in fear. It helps nothing. n/t

[deadmessengers]

9. Health insurance, no question about it.

Losing my family's health insurance would have similar consequences to being in a terrorist attack - with a grave risk of death for my wife, my daughter, or myself. The terror attack scenario is VERY unlikely, however, whereas losing our health insurance is one downsizing away.

[Elwood P Dowd]

10. What is health insurance?

Lost mine years ago. When I get sick, I just have to suffer through it and hope for the best.

[newmajority]

11. I'm most afraid of the Bush Crime Family creating another "terrorist " attack

which would in turn enable them to enact martial law, cancel the election, and as a result, no reform of health care would ever be possible.

[cynatnite]

12. I'm more afraid of not having it than I am of terrorists n/t

[razors edge]

13. Terrorist attack.

It will be the end of constitutional law in the US, and very few will care about insurance when martial law is enacted.

[AndyTiedye]

14. MIHOP

A fake terra attack which would be used as a pretext for martial law.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

15. I fear terrorists about as much as I fear being struck by a meteor

i.e. not at all.

[magellan]

16. Health insurance. We are losing ours this month. n/t

[MiniMe]

17. I work in DC and I'm still more afraid of no insurance

[papapi]

18. With $3 trillion we could have locked this country up like a bank vault instead...

...exposing ourselves to increased terror attacks.

[Jed Dilligan]

19. I'm not really afraid of either.

But the potential consequences of having no insurance are worse than anything that could happen to me as a result of a terrorist attack (other than being crippled and uninsured, in which case there would be both).