MrHealthInsurance

Late Night Extra:  The Senate Finance Committe has leaked some big changes to the House Bill.

• Individual Mandate to have insurance.


• No employer mandate but a tax to reimburse subsidy's to low income workers obtaining insurance.


• Scaled deductibilty of high cost insurance.   Those with $25,000 of annual benefits might only get to deduct 65% of the cost, much like the entertainment 50% deduction.


• Limit on Flexible Spending Accounts.   HSA's not mentioned, but ...

It's easy to be critical, it's tougher to present an alternative.    Today's entry will focus on an outline of the components that should be debated point by point and my suggestion of a bill that would probably be palatable to the majority of American's.   Even though this debate is less than two weeks old, most are already tiring of the hyperbole being thrown from all the special interests.  

To design any plan, ...

I just received this organizational chart outlining the Public healthcare plan.    It is provided by a Republican congressman, and has a bias tone to it, but it factually represents the governmental plan as proposed.   

I also want to mention that if I were critiquing the current plan, it would be less complicated, but have some different, and sometimes very unfair, obstacles.   You must remember that while private insurance will be grandfathered, it will not be available to most going forward, most private carriers will most likely fold or be non-competitive,  and you will lose your ability to make decisions without a governmental approval in this system.   



      ...

President Obama opened his conference with a clear, passionate, and generally accurate depiction of the state of current health system with some broad goals for reform.  Most importantly there was the new admission, as we have been pointing out in previous entries, that the main reason for this reform is “the biggest driving force in the federal deficit is the skyrocketing cost in Medicare and Medicaid. If we do not control these costs, we will not be able to control our deficit” .   The ...

It’s not just Federal Taxes that will go up.   State and local taxes will too. 

President Obama appears to be giving daily updates on Healthcare legislation and progress.   Here is a bullet point review of some of his noon statements today with  and fact checks.     

• Objections (to reform) are Politically based -  Doesn't pan out.  This isn't about $30 million for the Harvest Mouse in Nancy Pelosi's district that was essential in the economic stimilus bill in 2/2009.   This is about a $2.5 Trillion threat to scrap a healthcare system that, right or wrong, has existed for 60 years and, with all it's flaws, does currently cover over 250 million ...

If anyone has seen any other general projections of how it would work for individuals or families, please let me fact check it. 

I get a significant number of private emails daily with fears and anxiety about what these bills will do to them.   Some are for it and against it for reasons that appear to be unsubstantiated on each side.   Here is my projection of how it will work for individuals and businesses. 

Big picture:  Everyone must have health insurance protection.  No exceptions.  

For the Employer:

Huh?  What's that?

Back when Congress and the American Public cared about having a balanced budget, a section of the 1997 Balanced Budget act was injected to allow high priced doctors to opt out of Medicare and not be subject to any price controls.  In return for that, it prohibits doctors from participating in Medicare for two years and treating any patient without the patient agreeing that the patient is 100% responsible for payment and that Medicare deemed the treatment unnecessary.   This "PRIVATE CONTRACTING" has created a under the radar type, of better quality healthcare available only to those ...

How may people are uninsured and is this about helping them? 

The answer is it depends who you ask.  It appears that the answer is NO.   National Institute for Healthcare Mangement (April 2008) Brief:  says there are now 47 million, or 15.8% of the population uninsured.  Is that what it really says? On July 17th, 2009,  Howard Dean said on CNBC that the core issue is not about providing insurance to the uninsured, its " about the Private Sectors failure to control costs"

Is President Obama following through on his pledge or is something else really happening? The Answer is probably both. Most of us agree that "productive" healthcare reform is needed. Most of us recognize that President Obama campaigned for Health Reform and is following through. Has anybody wondered why this is being ramrodded through the houses of Government to get done so fast? I have. I don't presume that this is the answer, but I contend that the answers lie within GOOGLE, Yahoo, and MSN (bing!) I encourage you to do variations of the following search on your favorite engine " medicare reimbursement cut 2010 "