The Detroit Free Press, May 29, 2009, page 10A, "Business Headlines":
"The average American family who buys health insurance pays an additional $1,017 a year in premiums to subsidize health care for the uninsured, a new report released Thursday says.
This hidden tax, as the FamilyUSA report calls it, adds $368 a year to the bill for a single person buying insurance.
Nationwide, 45.7 million people, including 1.2 million in Michigan, are uninsured. The problem will grow this year, state and federal officials say, as more people lose jobs and workplace health insurance."
A member of this forum has maintained that socialism [collectivism?] in any form takes away human liberties and is degrading to individuals. There may be some philosophical merit to his argument.
However, how degrading and humiliating it must be for a person with a medical condition, but no insurance and no way to pay for treatment, to present himself at a hospital just because the law says they cannot be turned away. Wouldn't it be better for all citizens to be able to walk into a doctor's office or hospital and present his National Health Care Identification Card as coverage for services rendered? Just think, good health care for all, no matter one's income or social status.
Hospitals are laying-off staff because of the cost of the "charity cases" they are required to handle. Of course, charity cases are only one piece of the big picture. But charity cases must take a hefty bite out of a hospital's profit pie.
If I have privately purchased helth insurance and I'm paying extra for the uninsured, why not just have a Universal Health Care System for all?
HR 676 [Expanded Medicare to Cover All Persons] is in a House Committe now for consideration. S 703 [American Health Security Act of 2009] has been introduced in the Senate.
Google those two bills, read them over, then offer constructive opinions and criticism without accusing others of being socialists, collectivists, communists, hard-hearted, greedy, stingy, self-centered, self-righteous, self-absorbed, elitist, or reminding everyone of the failed policies of the liberals or conservatives, the left wing whackos or the conservative wing-nuts. This may be a good, ongoing discussion.
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