Health Care Gets Hot in Washington

My company has 80 employees and is treated as a 'group'. Any major illness causes huge increases in premiums and, by treating such a small pool of individuals as a group, our insurance company has high overhead keeping us separate. Why are companies/groups not pooled together?

As long as we have profit in the mix for health care it will never work. We must have a public plan. How about the same plan as Congress.

Why are the estimates for health care costs given as $10 trillion over ten years? Other costs, such as for wars, are often given over six-month periods.

Why would a public health insurance option cost any more than a private one? If Republicans want to keep down costs (fiscal conservatism), I would think that they would embrace it.

I believe a fundamental piece that is being glosed over by all the experts is that the american people are smart enough to know that simplification is the bring about accountability!

Why is the proposed public health care plan so often compared with plans in other countries (Canada, Great Britain, etc.) - don't we have one in the USA called Medicare?

Currently, America spends one out of every six dollars on healthcare. That's about twice what other industrialized countries spend... and our outcomes are no better, in fact we rank 37th in the world in terms of outcomes.

Spending one out of every five dollars on Healthcare is NOT the direction to go. FIRST we need to reduce needless spending. THEN we can expand coverage. If we first expand the coverage, we will never get the needless spending out of the system.

I lived in Germany for 12 years and was a participant in the German National Health Program. It was mandatory and had a public option along with dozens of private insurance plans to choose from. It is a great system and I was very pleased with the quality of care and the delivery of that care. The US should take a look at the German system. I experienced first-hand how well it works.

The system is what it is because of profit.
If the gov. speaks to the neccessity for insurance,is that not clearly the next bailout?
Its time to do away with what we know is wrong,profiting from the ill.

In the book by Dr. Caldwell Esseltyn Jr., Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease, the USDA creation is discussed, as is the intent of what has grown into a massive TAX FUNDED government agency licensed with "health" policy and nutritional guidelines.The ageny was created to expand the commodity markets for meat, eggs, poultry, and dairy, all the fatty, cholesterol laden foods that cause our organs to fail, one at a time from fat, concentrated protein, hormone production from fatty foods that affect our hormone system,and more recently from the added dangers of viruses sprayed on animal foods, genetically altered grains they are fed, arsenic fed to birds to reduce parasites, and added growth promotants such as antibiotics and growth hormones. Our health care system is juxtaposed over our food ssytem. health food brings healthy lives, or in the case of our society, expanding globally, the tragic opposit!
For decades, Americans have been seeing and hearing commerials and mass advertizing promoting what we eat. We learned our eating habits from our parents, who learned them from theirs, who learned them from commercials touting the good life of eating lots of animal protein and milk fat from bovine secretions nature intended to fatten young calves.
Once people understand that they have been the victims of industry bias in the food system, coupled with massive spending on commercials to get them to purchase unhealthy and unfit foods, many that were created in laboratories, they can shake off the grip of predatory marketing and begin to take responsibility for their own HEALTH.
Please stop calling it health care for it is not, it IS disease care.
WE ARE WHAT WE EAT!

A Wall Street Journal/NBC poll shows 72% of Americans want the option of a government-administered health insurance plan similar to Medicare to compete with private health insurance companies. A poll by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a conservative business research organization funded by the largest corporations in America, shows 83% of Americans favor “creating a new public health insurance plan that anyone can purchase”. It's rare for any issue to get such high approval ratings, much less a so-called "controversial" issue, yet Congress may fail to do the people's will on a public healthcare option. That's because the health insurance industry is pouring tons of money into lobbying and campaign donations, keeping Congress in its pocket. If you want the option of a robust, federally-run health insurance plan available to everyone, please call or email your Senators and Representatives. Better yet, come down to the Healthcare rally being held in D.C. this Thursday (6/25/09). If we don't make our voices heard loud and clear, we won't get what we want, need, and deserve!

The news has been filled with huge numbers representing what health care reform could cost. It needn't be that expensive, though. The amount of money currently being spent by individuals, businesses, and the government on health care is enough to cover all Americans - with no deductibles and no copays - if we go with a single payer system. A single payer system would eliminate the 31% of our health care dollars that are currently wasted by the private health insurance industry on administrative costs, huge profits, exorbitant CEO salaries, and marketing and advertising. For more info on single payer, see the FAQ by Physicians for a National Health Program: http://www.pnhp.org/facts/singlepayer_faq.php#rationing

If not single payer, at the very minimum we need a strong public health insurance option, one run by the federal government so as to be big enough to compete and to drive down costs. Regional coops, now being proposed as a bi-partisan alternative, would be too small and weak to be cost effective.

Our tax dollars are being stretched thin enough. We need to speak up and make sure our taxes are going to health care and not health insurance profiteers.

The system is what it is because of profit.
If the gov. speaks to the neccessity for insurance,is that not clearly the next bailout?
Its time to do away with what we know is wrong,profiting from the ill.