For Medicinaluseonly ...

USATODAY.com - Average family health policy nears $11,000

Average family health policy nears $11,000
By Julie Appleby, USA TODAY
The average cost for a family health insurance policy topped $10,000 for the first time this year, although premium costs rose at their slowest rate since 2000, a closely watched survey of employers released Wednesday shows.
Conducted annually by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, the survey highlights a growing concern: Rising health care costs are pricing more consumers and employers out of coverage.
The Kaiser survey found three out of five employers (60%) offered coverage, down from 69% five years earlier, with most losses in small companies. Among employers with 200 or more workers, 98% offer health coverage.
Growth in health insurance costs outpaced inflation and wage growth.
Proposed solutions include high-deductible policies, disease-management programs for chronic illnesses and more use of computer technology to streamline medical records.
"All these could have some impact at the margin, but I don't expect any to have a dramatic impact on the rate of increase overall," says Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser foundation.
The Kaiser study showed premiums paid by employers increased an average of 9.2% in 2005, less than the 11.2% rise in 2004, and the lowest since 2000, when they rose 8.2%.
This year, the average annual premium for family coverage hit $10,880, with employers paying an average of 74% of that cost and workers paying the rest. Workers this year paid on average $2,713 toward family coverage, or $1,094 more than they paid five years ago, the survey found.
Helen Darling, head of the National Business Group on Health in Washington, says those numbers may be low.
"The average we see is more like $12,000 per family," says Darling, who says the USA needs a multipronged approach to dealing with rising costs. Fighting obesity, improving patient safety and investing in technology are just three areas to attack, she says.
"We have to understand this is unaffordable and affecting everyone," she says. "We have to work together."
Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz, speaking at a health costs roundtable sponsored by cable channel CNBC, called on companies to offer health insurance, saying it's a "moral obligation."
Earlier, he told Washington state congressional representatives Starbucks will spend more on health insurance for employees this year than on coffee, according to the Associated Press.
"It's completely non-sustainable," he said, even for companies such as his that "want to do the right thing."

About 7.5 grand a year? That's extortion. Most of our workforce only earn an average of about 12.5 grand a year. Don't quote me on that, I never check anything out before posting.

Wow. That's a lot of dough. I've never been to a hospital for care in my life, I'll be fucked if I'd pay 7.5 grand a year for nothing. Can't you just do it on a pay as you go basis? Get your operation then pay it off afterwards.

Like your posts by the Dd. Very informative and you actually seem to enjoy it. Cheers for the info, mate.

Hey, I work for the government - of the state variety - and let me tell you no bigger example of waste, stupidity, and petty despotism exists...except maybe on the federal level.

arizonared said:

Hey, I work for the government - of the state variety - and let me tell you no bigger example of waste, stupidity, and petty despotism exists...except maybe on the federal level.

Click to expand...

OLD BILL! OLD BILL! HIDE YOUR SHIT.

Thanks skunk, I do enjoy doing the research and posting my results, I also like informing people of facts even if some do not want to except it

Go to the Hospital for any medical emergency that requires hospitalization in the US and you aren't walking out of there for less than $15,000 - $35,000.

Not to mention if you can not pay this bill, the hospital will ruin your credit.
Then you have to think also that the interest on that bill compounds yearly.
Then you have to put up with all the threatening phone calls from collection agentcies.
Your Nightmare has just began.
Thanks to the Bush Administration and his cronies in the congress and senate you can no longer file bankruptcy to get out from under it.. The United States no longer has Chapter 7 protection under bankruptcy filings.
(chapter 7 protection was a way to file that would give you a clean slate, and after 10 year waiting period you could re-establish credit.)
Chapter 7 Protection was to protect the debtor from predatory creditors, who either charge you huge fees or interest.

Dank sez ...

But Like before over at the Old CW Vi, when provided with facts, you either choose to ignore them or you impugn the point of view of the poster.

And yet, Dank ... in another thread you claimed the uninsured was 60% of the population. Who wouldn't refute that "fact?"

Vi

PS: If you were stoned at the time of posting, I completely understand.

Whomever said that Govt. is rational or productive must be twisted. I say that Govt. run medical would be better than HMO and Insurance run for profit med care. Only because the profit motive would be taken out of the equation. Bureaucracies are not effecient, but a single payer system would cost less than the current system costs. The difference is that instead of paying through the nose to insurance companys (they would be eliminated and the employees phased into the Govt. plan) you would pay more (dread) taxes. Large for profit medical HMOs would be disbanded and the doctors could have a say in patient treatment. I'm thinking that corporations would like this as they would be off the hook for med. insurance. Some equivalant form of corporate tax would have to be instituted to help pay for the govt. plan. I dont have all the parameters figured out, I just know that the current medical situation in this country is failing. Unless you can afford the 8-12 grand a year for med insurance or have a work plan or retirement plan like me, you are FUCKED! I have a relatively good plan through the teamsters union. I still pay 270.00 a mo and it goes up every year. In fact the Union plan is re-negotiated every year for the retirees, and the possibility of elimination is always on the table. every meeting I go to, all they talk about is the spiraling cost of health care. I don't think the doctors are raising their rates. In fact my doctor (whom I dearly love) says the Insurance companies are squeezing him for every dime, making him feel like a pawn in the medical game. So my question is this: who is reaping the benefits of the spiraling cost of medical care? OK I'll answer that one, The Insurance and HMO corporations, thats who! another G.W. Bush giveaway to big business. The old addage "let them eat cake" is now "let them eat shit"!

Who benefits in a competitive environment? The consumer does. When our entire health care system is turned over to the government to run, who will be competing with the government?

Vi

Nobody benefits in for profit health care except the corporations. There is no benefit to the consumer.
Those medical plans that appear to be cheap have such a high deductable that you would be better off with no insurance at all. Belive it or not Vi, from what I have read of Ayn Rand's Philosophy, she would be rolling over in her grave if she saw what corporations have done to capitalism... She was for small business and not for the corporation.

For referance I am adding this link which preceeds the forth coming article.

coffee grounds: Universal health care



With regard to some recent exchanges on universal health care, I think Greg Anrig's correct to say that only political cowardice can explain Democratic reluctance to get behind a big push on this score. But to amplify what I think Mark Schmitt is saying here, cowardice may be the better part of wisdom here. Or, as Plato puts it in Laches, it's not cowardice if it's wise -- it's caution. Voters who are primarily concerned with health care are already strongly inclined to back Democrats who pursue an incrementalist approach to health care, suggesting to me that the political upside to a bolder approach may be smaller than a straightforward read of the polls suggests. It doesn't really matter how many people agree with you, what matters is how many people who really care agree with you.


If you try for a "big bang" overhaul of the health care system, one group of people who's going to care a lot will be the folks who run the businesses that will be aversely impacted. A single payer system would more-or-less put the insurance industry out of business (among other things) and you can't expect to try that without meeting some fierce opposition. Understanding this, the inclination is to try and devise big bang proposals that somehow co-opt the vested interests by retaining a primary role for private insurance in the context of a regulate-and-subsidize scheme that would get you universal coverage.

As we saw in 1993-94, however, interest group opposition to something like that can remain pretty fierce and you lose a lot of the simplicity that makes universal coverage politically appealing. There are also, I think, pretty serious substantive problems with all the ideas along these lines I've seen.

What I take from this is that even though a massive overhaul of health care would be desirable, it's not really feasible to get it done in a desirable way.

At the same time, incrementalism has a lot of promise. We have a lot of government-run health care in this country -- Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP, the Veterans' Administration, etc. -- and we've seen over the past ten years that it's possible to expand the ambit of these programs. The Kerry campaign had a good plan to expand state-sector involvement in a modest-but-important way by essentially shouldering super-catastrophic costs. I think that was a good idea. Expanding Medicare to cover prescription drugs was a good idea, albeit one that under Bush's watch turned into an albatross. Re-doing that reform is important. Gradually expanding Medicaid eligibility to take in more of the working poor and a bigger-and-bigger proportion of children is a good idea. "Medicare for all," is a nice slogan but not really doable and it's not clear what it would mean. But "Medicare for 60 year-olds" seems more plausible.

If you keep working at it over time, I think this kind of approach can get you -- eventually -- to a much better health care system. Going for the whole enchilada is just going to get you mowed down by an unprecedented advertising barrage. Taking a chance on a big bang reform that doesn't actually achieve what liberals want (basically what Clinton did) seems unwise. It's oft-forecast that "one day" large employers will get behind universal health care and maybe the insurance industry will see the writing on the wall and welcome a compromise. I'd welcome such a compromise, too, but I think the compromise proposal needs to come from that side and, in practice, this doesn't seem to be happening.

To make a long story short, there's a difference between bravery and taking foolish risks. There's a lot at stake in small bore issues. Even when the differences between the parties are less-than-gigantic the differences that exist are still matters of life and death for non-trivial numbers of people.

A little more to chew on...

http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=1498

For Joel Segal, it was the day he was kicked out of George Washington Hospital, still on an IV after knee surgery, without insurance, and with $100,000 in medical debt. For Kiki Peppard, it was having to postpone needed surgery until she could find a job with insurance -- it took her two years. People all over the United States are waking up to the fact that our system of providing health care is a disaster.
An estimated 50 million Americans lack medical insurance, and a similar and rapidly growing number are underinsured. The uninsured are excluded from services, charged more for services, and die when medical care could save them—an estimated 18,000 die each year because they lack medical coverage.
But it’s not only the uninsured who suffer. Of the more than 1.5 million bankruptcies filed in the U.S. each year, about half are a result of medical bills; of those, three-quarters of filers had health insurance.
Businesses are suffering too. Insurance premiums increased 73 percent between 2000 and 2005, and per capita costs are expected to keep rising. The National Coalition on Health Care (NCHC) estimates that, without reform, national health care spending will double over the next 10 years. The NCHC is not some fringe advocacy group--its co-chairs are Congressmen Robert D. Ray (R-IA) and Paul G. Rogers (D-FL), and it counts General Electric and Verizon among its members.
Employers who want to offer employee health care benefits can’t compete with low-road employers who offer none. Nor can they compete with companies located in countries that offer national health insurance.
The shocking facts about health care in the United States are well known. There’s little argument that the system is broken. What’s not well known is that the dialogue about fixing the health care system is just as broken.
Among politicians and pundits, a universal, publicly funded system is off the table. But Americans in increasing numbers know what their leaders seem not to — that the United States is the only industrialized nation where such stories as Joel’s and Kiki’s can happen.
And most Americans know why: the United States leaves the health of its citizens at the mercy of an expensive, patchwork system where some get great care while others get none at all.
The overwhelming majority — 75 percent, according to an October 2005 Harris Poll — want what people in other wealthy countries have: the peace of mind of universal health insurance.

A wild experiment?
Which makes the discussion all the stranger. The public debate around universal health care proceeds as if it were a wild, untested experiment -- as if the United States would be doing something never done before.
Yet universal health care is in place throughout the industrialized world. In most cases, doctors and hospitals operate as private businesses. But government pays the bills, which reduces paperwork costs to a fraction of the American level. It also cuts out expensive insurance corporations and HMO's, with their multimillion-dollar CEO compensation packages, and billions in profit. Small wonder "single payer" systems can cover their entire populations at half the per capita cost. In the United States, people without insurance may live with debilitating disease or pain, with conditions that prevent them from getting jobs or decent pay, putting many on a permanent poverty track. They have more difficulty managing chronic conditions — only two in five have a regular doctor -- leading to poorer health and greater cost.
The uninsured are far more likely to wait to seek treatment for acute problems until they become severe.
Even those who have insurance may not find out until it’s too late that exclusions, deductibles, co-payments, and annual limits leave them bankrupt when a family member gets seriously ill.
In 2005, more than a quarter of insured Americans didn't fill prescriptions, skipped recommended treatment, or didn’t see a doctor when sick, according to the Commonwealth Fund’s 2005 Biennial Health Insurance Survey.
People stay in jobs they hate — for the insurance. Small business owners are unable to offer insurance coverage for employees or themselves. Large businesses avoid setting up shops in the United States — Toyota just chose to build a plant in Canada to escape the skyrocketing costs of U.S. health care.
All of this adds up to a less healthy society, more families suffering the double whammy of financial and health crises, and more people forced to go on disability.
But the public dialogue proceeds as if little can be done beyond a bit of tinkering around the edges. More involvement by government would create an unwieldy bureaucracy, they say, and surely bankrupt us all. The evidence points to the opposite conclusion.
The United States spends by far the most on health care per person — more than twice as much as Europe, Canada, and Japan which all have some version of national health insurance. Yet we are near the bottom in nearly every measure of our health.
The World Health Organization (WHO) ranks the U.S. health care system 37th of 190 countries, well below most of Europe, and trailing Chile and Costa Rica. The United States does even worse in the WHO rankings of performance on level of health -- a stunning 72nd. Life expectancy in the U.S. is shorter than in 27 other countries; the U.S. ties with Hungary, Malta, Poland, and Slovakia for infant mortality — ahead of only Latvia among industrialized nations.

The cost of corporate bureaucracy
Where is the money going? An estimated 15 cents of each private U.S. health care dollar goes simply to shuffling the paperwork. The administrative costs for our patched-together system of HMO's, insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, hospitals, and government programs are nearly double those for single-payer Canada. It’s not because Americans are inherently less efficient than Canadians — our publicly funded Medicare system spends under five cents per budget dollar on administrative overhead. And the Veterans Administration, which functions like Britain’s socialized medical system, spends less per patient but consistently outranks private providers in patient satisfaction and quality of care.
But in the private sector, profits and excessive CEO pay are added to the paperwork and bureaucracy. The U.S. pharmaceutical industry averages a 17 percent profit margin, against three percent for all other businesses. In the health care industry, million-dollar CEO pay packages are the rule, with some executives pulling down more than $30 million a year in salary and amassing billion-dollar stock option packages.

Do those costs really make the difference?
Studies conducted by the General Accounting Office, the Congressional Budget Office, and various states have concluded that a universal, single-payer health care system would cover everyone -- including the millions currently without insurance -- and still save billions.
Enormous amounts of money are changing hands in the health-industrial complex, but little is going to the front line providers — nurses, nurse practitioners, and home health care workers who put in long shifts for low pay. Many even find they must fight to get access to the very health facilities they serve.
Doctors complain of burnout as patient loads increase. They spend less time with each patient as they spend more time doing insurance company mandated paperwork and arguing with insurance company bureaucrats over treatments and coverage.

Americans know what they want
In polls, surveys, town meetings, and letters, large majorities of Americans say they have had it with a system that is clearly broken and they are demanding universal health care. Many businesses -- despite a distaste for government involvement -- are coming to the same view. Doctors, nurses, not-for-profit hospitals, and clinics are joining the call, many specifically saying we need a single-payer system like the system in Canada. And while we hear complaints about Canada’s system, a study of 10 years of Canadian opinion polling showed that Canadians are more satisfied with their health care than Americans. Holly Dressel’s article shows why.
Although you’d never know it from the American media, the number of Canadians who would trade their system for a U.S.-style health care system is just eight percent.
Again, the public dialogue proceeds from a perplexing place. Dissatisfied Canadians or Britons are much talked about. But there’s little mention of the satisfaction level of Americans. The Commonwealth Fund’s survey, for instance, shows that, in 2005, 42 percent of Americans doubted whether they could get quality health care. At a series of town hall meetings in Maine, facilitators asked participants to discuss dozens of complex health care policies but excluded single-payer as an option. (See Tish Tanski’s article. Only after repeated demands by participants was the approach that cuts out the corporate middle-men allowed on the list.
The same story played out across the country at town meetings convened by the congressionally mandated Citizens’ Health Care Working Group. In Los Angeles, New York, and Hartford, participants simply refused to consider the questions they were given about tradeoffs between cost, quality, and accessibility. They insisted that there’s already enough money being spent to pay for publicly funded universal health care.
But it’s not only about the money. Comments from participants in the town meetings, from Fargo to Memphis, from Los Angeles to Providence, revealed an understanding that this is about a deeper question. It is an issue of the sort of society we want to be -- one in which we all are left to sink or swim on our own or one in which we recognize that the whole society benefits when we each can get access to the help we need.
Likewise, when we asked readers of the YES! email newsletter what would make you healthier, nearly all answered in terms of “we.” Any one of us could get sick or be injured. Any one could lose a job and with it insurance. Our best security, they said, is coverage for all.

What form might this take?
As elections near and the issue of health care tops opinion polls as the most pressing domestic issue, various proposals for universal health care are circulating. The bipartisan NCHC looked at four options: employer mandates, extending existing federal programs like Medicaid to all those uninsured, creating a new federal program for the uninsured, and single-payer national health insurance. All the options saved billions of dollars compared to the current system, but single payer was by far the winner, saving more than $100 billion a year.
Meanwhile, the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group, which held those town meetings around the country, has issued interim recommendations. They state the values participants expressed: All Americans should have affordable health care, and assuring that they do is a shared social responsibility. Sadly, that bold statement is followed by inconclusive recommendations: more study, no preference for public funding, and a strong commitment to get everybody covered by 2012—but with no means to do it. The commission will make final recommendations to the president and Congress, and is accepting public comment through the end of August.

What is the obstacle?
With all the support and all the good reasons to adopt universal health care, why don’t we have it yet? Why do politicians refuse to talk about the solution people want?
It could be the fact that the health care industry, the top spender on Capitol Hill, spent $183.3 million on lobbying just in the second half of 2005, according to PoliticalMoneyLine. com. And in the 2003–2004 election cycle, they spent $123.7 million on election campaigns, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
Politicians dread the propaganda barrage and political fallout that surrounded the failed Clinton health care plan. But in the years since, health care costs have outpaced growth in wages and inflation by huge margins, Americans have joined the ranks of the uninsured at the rate of 2 million each year, and businesses are taking a major competitiveness hit as they struggle to pay rising premiums.
Healthcare-Now (www.healthcare-now.org) is holding town hall meetings throughout the United States (they’ve held 93 so far), and people are pressing their representatives to take action. Over 150 unions have called for action on universal health care, and polls show overwhelming majorities of Americans feel the same way.
Some political leaders are pressing for universal health care. Remember Joel, who was kicked out of the hospital with $100,000 in medical debt? He started giving speeches about the catastrophe of our health care system, and eventually got hired by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) to head his universal single payer health care effort. Conyers’ "Medicare for All" bill now has 72 co-sponsors. Rep. Jim McDermott’s (D-WA) Health Security Act has 62.
Around the United States, state and local campaigns for universal health care are making progress. (See Rev. Linda Walling’s update).
One of these days, the lobbyists and their clients in government may have to get out of the way and let Americans join the rest of the developed world in the security, efficiency, and quality that comes with health care for all.

Hey Dank, check out the American Reform Party platform, I think it has what we're after. I know it's a long shot, but their platform pretty much says what I believe to be the right way! American Reform Party They have the fixes for our country in mind. It certainly describes what I believe in. Hey V-Red this is where I'm at, not communism, go fly a kite!

This is one nightmare thread. You boys certainly love getting into the nitty-gritty of politics. Can't we just forget about all the statistics which, let's face it, are bullshit anyway?

Spin doctors working for both sides can pull statistics out of their proverbial hats. say Cheese! lovely smoke, lovely.

Med sez ...

"Hey V-Red this is where I'm at, not communism, go fly a kite!"

Like I said before, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck ...

Now then, I visited the ARP site you posted, went through their pages, and found that, other than supporting third party candidates, they don't stand for anything at all. They are like the Democrats; when asked for solutions, it's as though you've dropped a pebble into a bottomless well. You wait, and wait, and wait to hear the splash and it never comes. You say you support their ideas. What ideas? Be specific ... exactly what parts of their platform do you support?

I look at these political forums as places to learn. So far, you've done a nice job of demonstrating your violent nature. That's about it. Do you have anything constructive to add?


Vi

You boys just waking up in your part of the world? It's 16:40 here, or thereabouts.

hey skunk, wait a minute, you guys have universal health care. Your right, untill I hit into my mid 50s, I didn't care a hoot about health care, but when the old bod started telling me it was tired and needed some attention, health care became an issue. I'm fortunate enough to have VA health ins.(Veterans) and a union retiree plan, so I can't complain, but the horror stories as stated in this thread are real. I know people who work hard and make survivor wages that if they got sick (no Insurance) would be devastated. This, the richest nation on earth, treats it's citizens like stink. Only when the YUPPIEs start feeling the pinch will anything be done about it. As long as we have a large number of elitests, we will never get any positive changes, wealthy arseholes want no changes ie. ViRedd!

"....wealthy arseholes want no changes ie. ViRedd!"

Ahhh ... nothing like the politics of envy.

Vi

I thought you said it was ignorance. make up your mind, and where is your proof that 650,000 iraqis have not been killed since Mar. 2003? Untill you answer that one I have no need of your drivel!