Sold at WalMart
Perhaps it’s time for WalMart to take over managing health care. You know they’ll bring the cost down. All the doctors may be made in sweat shops in Asia, but at least we’ll be able to afford some kind of health care, including WalMart employees.
52% of Americans Disgusted with Health Care Costs
Several new surveys graphically illustrate the average American’s growing disgust with the inefficient – largely employer sponsored – US health care system.
The annual Health Confidence Survey found that dissatisfaction with health insurance costs increased by 58% from last year – from 33% to 52%. Of the respondents dissatisfied, according to an article in the LA Times, most of this unhappiness is focused on rising costs.
The percentage of individuals rating the system as poor has doubled to 30% since 1998, according to the survey. 28% consider it fair while only 10% consider health care very good, according to 1000 adults polled.
60% of those polled said costs of their health plan — premiums, deductibles and co-payments — had gone up in the last year. Of that group, 28% said that because of health-related costs, they had trouble paying for housing, heat and food.
Overall, the proportion of employees covered by a company plan dropped from 81% in 2001 to 77% in 2005.
Asked to choose between a $6,700 raise and employer-sponsored health insurance, 75% of those polled picked the health plan.
Asked to choose between a $6,700 raise and employer-sponsored health insurance, 75% of those polled picked the health plan.
Damn straight.
My company still covers 85%, and I shudder to think how much that actually is…
A co-worker left the company so she and her husband could run their own business. She came back to work – for the health insurance coverage – because the cost of health insurance, and doubled Social Security taxes, were eating all of their profits.
Duh! I’m among the fortunate. My company spends $30k per family for the health plan and they cover nearly everything… but think of this: I went to the ER with appendicitis in August. The HOSPITAL bill for my 36-hour visit and laproscopic surgery was $21k! The ER doc (who ordered the various tests and discussed the matter with me) billed $485 for … oh… 45 minutes of time. Health insurance, which pays 100%, paid $450, their “usual and customary charge” for such services. Then I got a bill for the other $35! Wowzers! The insurance company has a deal with the hospital, so they worked the cost down to about $15k, but spend a minute thinking what would have happened if my job were labor and not poking on a computer all day: I wouldn’t have had health insurance coverage and I wouldn’t have been able to work for at least a week. I might have lost my job, and I would owe the hospital an entire year’s wages for having my appendix out!
There was a fabulous Star Trek Voyager episode on the topic, “Critical Care.” (They rarely tackled anything serious like the original series did, but in this one episode they did a fantastic job.) The doctor was put to work on a planet where they had 3 levels of care – literally. On the top floor were people receiving beauty injections and other optional treatments. On the middle floor were people receiving medically necessary treatments, and on the bottom, the same drugs that were being used for beauty treatments at top were being rationed and denied to patients who needed it for life-saving measures. The top floor patients were aristocracy, the bottom floor patients were workers. Same thing in this country.
If you have a good job and a good health insurance policy, a trip to the hospital might not ruin you, but if you’re in the bottom third of the country, best not get sick.
I can trace the deterioration in my health almost to the day that I was forced into “managed care”. HMOs are to health care what the Yugo was to the automobile.
We should got Cuba and steal their doctors – they’re some of the best trained medical profesionals in the world and better yet, they’ll work for pennies… whats not lot luv?
You all don’t even want to know what my medical costs have been this past year and a half and still going. My Father owns his business, which is basically ranching/farming and pays for health insurance for all our hands and our family. He has a policy that covers almost everything at 85%. It’s the biggest expense the business has.
But there are quite a few culprits involved…..from Doctors who order multible tests to cover their asses from law suits, to illegals who go to the ER for colds and sore throats, to the goverment with myrid rules and regulations that Hospitals and Doctors must cope with.
Like almost anything the goverment touches, the costs just go up and up.
“… and doubled Social Security taxes, were eating all of their profits.”
Just because you don’t see it on your pay stub doesn’t mean you aren’t paying it. This nonsense about your employer “contributing” half of your payroll taxes is just a way for the government to disguise the real cost of the SS and Medicare systems from ignorant Americans.
Go Canada!
If only American adopt the insurance system that Canada has.. I bet all of us will be happy..
It sad that our voice is ignored by the government when it comes to our rights to health insurance.. Dont know what the administration is doing with this abusive insurance agencies and hospitals 🙁
Canadian taxes is very high.. but their medicare and educational benefits are really great!!
Are the insurance agencies regulated by the government? if they are derregulated no wonder why the cost of health insurance keeps increasing every year!! >: