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What do the candidates most need to understand about America’s health care crisis and its effects on working families? What do they need to focus most on fixing? |
(You can find more information at www.aflcio.org/issues/politics/issues_healthcare.cfm.)
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After I lost my union job back in the 1990’s, I worked as a retail manager at a mall with great insurance benefits. However, I was never allowed the time off to use them. When that company went under and I again found myself unemployed, with a small infant to care for, I decided to open a child care in my home and be self-employed. Now I don’t get time off or have any insurance. I have priced health insurance for me and my family and I don’t even make enough to purchase it. My son is the only one I can get insurance for and it is because of Hoosier Healthwise, which is great for kids, but not for families. I am 51, my son is now 8 years old. The older you get the higher the premium and the more you need it. What’s to become of my son if something happens to me because I can’t get medical help. Yes, there is a clinic that pro-rates based on your income, but I owe $5000. in medical bills that I can’t pay, so soon, I’ll not even have them. Being your own boss is great, but I sure do miss the union, the respect, the pay, and the benefits. I would be union if I could be, but I will always support them no matter whether I am or not because they raise the standard of living for us all. The candidates need to understand that and the importance for making insurance affordable to all.
Last year I worked for a non-union company 89 days for a company and couldn’t get health care because you had to work for them for 90 days to be covered. Just this past month I worked for a union company 28 days, but you had to have 30 days to get coverage. Let me guess it’s just the nature of contract work. Or maybe the companies just don’t want to pay.
Our legislators need to realize we don’t need ‘chewing gum’ fixes. They do the bare minimum to patch the holes when medical issues should be a top priority. ‘Can’t do’ has become the slogan of our government, in more areas than one, and we need real legislators not the deadweight that has been foisted upon us.
Re-regulate the health care industry. Soaring health care costs have affected nearly every industry. Why are they so high? Are Americans getting sicker? I thought deregulation of the health insurance industry and allowing privatization of hospitals were supposed to make everything run more efficiently and lower health care costs. Apparently not. I don’t see how that was supposed to work anyway. How would adding additional layers of profit and overhead decrease costs? Granted, non-profit insurance companies and hospitals were very inefficient prior to deregulation and HMO’s and for-profit hospitals have helped to organize and streamline operations but they’re taking such enormous profits that the resulting effect is an overall increase in cost. It has also resulted in increased risk to Americans because, in cutting their own costs to maximize profits, HMOs have cut services to the insured. They’ve even gone so far as to bribe doctors to limit or avoid certain expensive diagnostic procedures and treatments to further cut costs. Hospitals are habitually understaffed resulting in higher and higher numbers of mistakes, often with deadly consequences. The health insurance industry and hospitals need to be forced back into being non-profit.
The government should be funding research to find cures for diseases and treatments for conditions, not to make profits for drug companies. Drug company profits play a huge role in high health care costs. They say they need such high prices so they can fund more research but that is a lie. The US government funds the majority of all clinical research with our tax dollars. Another large percentage of research is funded by private organizations. Less than 2% of drug company profits actually go towards research. The rest goes right into their greedy pockets. We need to bring these industries back under regulation and control and limit profits
Vitamin and herbal supplements and extracts could be a much cheaper and healthier way to treat many illnesses that currently require expensive, caustic drugs to treat. There’s growing evidence that Vitamin and herbal supplements and extracts can treat many illnesses and conditions as good as, if not better than, drugs can and often with no harmful side effects. Many alternative remedies and therapies are used successfully in the mainstream in other countries already to treat a variety of diseases, even cancer.
Until I got a good, union job in 1989, my family could not afford health insurance. It was terrifying not knowing what we’d do if I or one of my kids became ill. Today, I am one of the lucky ones, in a unpleasant way: I developed MS at age 50, and my union’s health plan has covered my doctor bills and medications. I cannot imagine what I would do, where I would be without that insurance. I’m pretty sure my two kids wouldn’t be in college. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t continue to afford the moderate home I purchased seven years ago.
I have too many friends who work full-time, but do not have health insurance. When they get sick, they can’t afford proper treatment, and they often lose their jobs if they are ill too long. One friend is 60, a veteran, whoworks in a nonunion factory, and who recently is in constant agony from degenerating disks in his neck and upper back. He is supposed to go to physical therapy, but he cannot afford it. He can’t afford the medications he was prescribed, either. He can’t afford to miss work, because he needs to eat and pay rent. He walks around in agony. He’s desperately hoping for section 8 housing, but the waiting list is very long. He could end up homeless anytime. What’s the solution?
How about all Americans being permitted to join the Congressional health plan? How about a single payer national health insurance plan for everyone? How about cutting out the greedy middlemen, namely insurance companies - which are mindless corporations seeking profit, not caring folks who want to help? How about our representatives serving the citizenry as they’re supposed to instead of corporate giants?
Not only do we have an appalling number of people without health insurance (and shouldn’t ANY number without health insurance be unacceptable?), but there are certainly many others who are fortunate to have health benefits but are now trapped in their jobs because they can’t find anything else with such benefits. As more and more employers find ways to eliminate health benefits, and/or employ workers only as independent contractors, the situation grows worse. This is a drag on our national growth, productivity and creativity.
KateyB you couldn’t have said it better.
I too have a union job with insurance and would be unable to afford my prescriptions without it. My parents, however, have insurance but can’t afford the medications needed for my Mom’s arthritis in her back. She suffers everyday because the medications prescribed to her are not on the list of “covered” drugs and nothing else works. There shouldn’t BE a list of covered or non-covered drugs…they should all be covered. And everyone who doesn’t have access to health/dental/vision insurance thru an employer should be able to get government assistance that actually COVERS the things they need to get done. The insurance companies are making too much profit-plain and simple.
Health care shouldn’t be about profit, it should be about making people better.
I have one thing to say about fixing health care in the U.S.
Get the Insurance Industry out of Health Care. All they do is bleed our wallets, for their own gain.
Frank Heatherington
Madison County, NC
I would suggest a national day of sick out for all Union Members to counter attack the sick notion of today’s corporate way of thinking that they can treat people as peons (slaves). Let’s see if the CEOs and Managers can get the job done without the Union Members who actually do the work! This is getting ridiculous. If we don’t speak up as a body of people, the rich will continue to try to diminish the middle class and take away our standard of living.
If everyone called in sick for one day, what would happen in the work place? It’s about out only option now, since negotations are getting harder and more stressful in all of our lives. You won’t see a CEO or a manager or for that matter many supervisors actually doing any work at all. What would happen if “us” the public refused for just one day to come in and do the job?
Fellow brothers and sisters, the time has come to Unite together and get back to the “American Way of Life”
I am a medical retiree. I am living with mental illness as I have for most of my life, and it is what caused me to have to give up my job with the federal government 7 years ago. My insurance is pretty good but with gas and everything else going up I can no longer afford my medication, which is $200 a month after insurance. This is a very bad situation for someone with potentially psychotic psychiatric issues. My family is either all dead or has nothing to do with me. I am fortunate to have good neighbors and a church that helps to look after me. Nevertheless, this is not a perfect safety net. I don’t want to lose my home, my pets and the few belongings I have not yet had to sell, if I have to be institutionalized, which would be at the taxpayers’ expense. I am only 46 and I have a lot of good years left. I am educated and I still have skills. I want to go back to work at something if I can get my medication and return to being stable. Unless we can convince drug companies to reduce prices for people in need, or let us buy our prescription medications from Canada without a lot of hassle, people like me will remain in our homes, unproductive and out of the work force. Thank you for reading my message. Kathy in Kansas City
What most candidates need to understand about America’s health care crisis is the same thing that most Americans must understand.
For Profit Health Care is the major cause of the crisis. In a for profit system most of the money is wasted on profits for the Insurance companies and their Greedy Capitalist Executive salaries.
Quality Health Care should be a Right for Everyone, not just the Rich.
When we finally impliment a Single Payer, “Medicare for all , not for profit type Universal Health Care System, all Americans Poor, Middle Class and Rich, will benefit . The money that was wasted on profits will be used to improve theQuality of Health Care by increasing , Hospital Beds, More Medical Professionals, and even lower taxes .
It is time for All Americans to realize what the rest of the civilized world already knows and as known for over 50 years. Socialized Medicine is the only way to provide Quality Health Care for all.
The greedy Capitalists had their chance to provide affordable healt care service. They failed because of their greedy desire for ever greater profits. Greed is the fatal flaw of Capitalism.
Socialism is the more Equatible, Sustainable and much more Democratic System of the future.
The only true solution to the health care crisis to for the legislature to pass SB 840 and then the Governor to sign it into law. All other plans now being considered have serious flaws, namely, they still retain the insurance industry a spart of their plans. The only plan that should be passed and signed is SB 840. It will provide ALL Californians with the very best coverage at the least cost, and it will remove the insurance industry out of the picture which is the root cause of all of our health care problems.
Thank you, Wes
The most efficient way to add health care for the uninsured is to use the trusted and proven systems of Medicare and Mediiaide. Expand Mediaide to phase in coverage for children by age to reach 18 year olds within 5 years. Phase down the age of Medicare to reach 18 year olds within 15 years (down to 50 first 5 years, 35 within 10 and 18 within 15)
Begin a long term plan to merge the two systems into one univerisal healthcare systems once the two systems meet. Establish a basic level of healthcare for the plan. Allow individuals or their employers to negotiate with the private sector for additional coverage as desired over the basic coverage.
Anyone going to www.numbers usa.com will find out the costs of illegals healthcare is passed along to stakeholders who are taxpayers, in the guise of expanses the providers must recoup some way, so why would they want to be citizens if they can free load off the Citizens?
It is all part of this:
Based on new information released by SSA:
From 1937-1999 (a 63-year period), the ESA (Earnings Suspense File)from fake SS cards accumulated a total of $301.8 billion. It almost doubled, however, from 2000-2004 (the most recent years for which data is available) to $585 billion, largely a result of minimal workplace enforcement efforts.letting the illegals take over to keep wages low.
From 2000-2004, the file grew by an average of $57 billion in “uncredited wages,” represented by 9.3 million wage reports per year. By contrast, the file grew by just $18.9 billion and 5.2 million wage reports per year throughout the 1990s, and $7.8 billion and 4.2 million wage reports per year throughout the 1980s.
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the percentage of reinstatements to valid Social Security numbers from the ESF for “potentially unauthorized work” averaged an estimated 32 percent from 1986-2003, and exceeded 50 percent of all reinstatements for foreign-born workers in some of those years.
Since we know that Social Security is forecast to go bankrupt by the year 2040, we find it unfathomable that our government would willingly bankrupt the system even sooner by giving billions of dollars to people who broke the laws of the United States with the plan to give them green cards to work, and valid SS cards, and traceback what was paid under the fake ones!
Plainly, if the 20 million illegals and their’anchor babies’ who are misconstrued to be citizens were not on our soil, it would lessen the burdens we are forced to bear in their behalf, as they go to emergency rooms as a routine matter, for free maternity services and anything else they can get free.
Here are two areas that are often overlooked by many: “Designer” drug ads and malpractice lawsuits. The financial burden should not be “shifted” to the consumer. If a drug company can’t afford to advertise (i.e. pay AHEAD of time), then they have no business doing so. If a doctor gets sued, that MD doesn’t have the right to raise his rates (nor does the center that that person practices in.) They need to “eat” the cost and leave the consumer/patient alone. Greed (a topic no company will admit to) is ruining America. A honest day’s profit is understandable, but greed, which is what we have, is unacceptable. It’s time for a “line item audit” from the IRS to find out what money is going where. Also, Americans should be able to buy medications from Canada if they wish. Enough with the “red tape”! Too many Americans are living on a “fixed” in come - they can’t afford to even see a doctor anymore! This is flat out wrong! It needs to be fixed now! Stop covering the illegal aliens!!!!!!!! Social Security needs to be taken out of the “general” fund and put back into a place where it can’t be touched by the federal government, only by those that pay into the system (i.e. those who are LEGALLY employed! Former President Carter should have left it alone, but didn’t, and now we have a big mess on our hands. Wonderful!) Get health care fixed now so that it covers everyone (except illegals, of course. If they choose to go thru the proper channels and become legal later, then that’s fine as long as they have a real job that pays into Social Security, not the “money under the table” bit!)
It is absolutely unacceptable for the legal American citizens to have to pick up the tab for the illegals medical costs. Their doctors office is the emergency room where they know that they will not be turned down. How can this be justified when our elderly and others have paid into the system and cannot get the care that they need? What about our poor and disadvantaged children? It really SICKENS me that this is allowed. Especially when our flag is spit on, they don’t want to become citizens because then they might have to pay into the system just like us. They certainly are not shamed by scamming us out because OUR government is allowing it. We elected these people, we are paying their salary yet we can’t do anything about something as big as this. American citiizens better wake up and UNITE soon because shortly it will be too late. We’re running out of time here.
The insurance industry and the drug companies need to be separated and their pockets need to quit being lined. I have sat in a doctors waiting room for hours while a drug rep is treating the staff and doctor to huge expensive “incentives”. Not just once either. Drug prices are sky high with very little explanation. How do hospitals get millions and millions of dollars to “upgrade” their hospitals? Could at least part of it be from the outrageous prices that patients are charged for medicines and services? I have worked UNION PROUD for 28-1/2 years. I don’t know if I will make 30 while on the payroll. If I don’t my insurance will cost me and I have several health problems myself. I wonder how I will get by then. I am a middle income citizen who is rapidly being done away with. I’m up for any reasonable suggestions. The rich and politicians are getting richer and the middle is being eaten up. How about we file law suits against all of the government people who have been convicted of fraud with our tax money? I would sign up for sure. Americans we have got to stand together and help each other. United we stand, divided we fall.
The biggest problem with our health care, and the one that makes it so costly,is the insurance industry. Insurance is a for profit and will do everything possible to maintain their profit margin. They also cause medical costs to rise because of the cost of claims paperwork. A single source system will solve this problem and also help contain the cost of medicine (drugs) bringing them in line with the rest of the industrial world.
If you go back in time to when health care went through the roof, it is when the insurance industry got involved. When insurance got widespread they decided to start overcharging for services and then prescriptions. It is to late to reverse everything. Its no different than the big over payed sports athletes. The more you give them, the more they think they can get.. SIMPLE GREED…..
Ridding our country of ALL illegals would be a huge relief. Illegals who continually use the er’s as their ‘family physicians’ have forced the closing of several er’s and, in some cases, entire hositals in CA and probably in other states as well. They go in for treatment with no intention of ever paying the bill. As for those er’s and hospitals that have managed to remain open despite treating these freeloaders the costs are passed on to those of us with healthcare as well as those without.
Candidates need to understand that most Americans are not white collar entrepreneurs who make their nut out of tax breaks and hope to save money by making private arrangements for all their benefits. The largest single block of voters is made of workers who depend on employers and the government for all their wages and benefits. Workers don’t buy into the right wing crackpot vision of every taxpayer as a small businessman who plays with his finances to get ahead. Most workers don’t understand how a white collar businessman thinks and they don’t want to. They want their overpaid elected officials to take care of basic problems related to benefits so that workers can focus on their work, and, more importantly, on their home lives. The American dream shouldn’t depend on the ability to be clever about paper work. We all need the same things. This country would be more competitive and more prosperous if the government could get straight on benefits.
The majority of these candidates need to show support for the working people of America. Not only is corporate health care system is financial drain however the bigger and smaller businesses is feeling the crunch. Could this be that America health care is being drain by workers being overwork my computers? America needs Scientist and Engineers.
Fix the compound material amount that’s being used to process the motherboard, microprocessor and semiconductor that’s sipping slowly in our blood cells.
FOCUS on musculoskeletal disorder an injury that’s been pushed under the rug since the early 1980’s. I’m a victim who been down and out for 25 years by a private utility company on the Pacific coast working on computers.
Money is being made by investor in computer that lots of electricity to keep them running. Wake-up America and let your eyes and ears listen to what the leader of America kept saying over and over again.
I believe that, in order to get all Americans Health Care, our country needs to quit worrying about corporate profits and get down to the business of helping all of us to get Universal Health Care. Each one of us is a human being living in the richest country in our world. What part of we need to help each other doesn’t everyone understand? Health Care, in my point of view, is there to help people get better from their sickness or disease and not to make drug companies richer. We need to have more preventative measures for diseases also.
Health Care is only one issue that the candidates need to focus on — economic justice, the freedom to join a union, and reigning in corporate power are others of equal importance. We are in a period as economically lopsided as the Gilded Age, where workers are locked in no-win competition with exploited foreign workers. We have abandoned our most cherished values in favor of our wealthiest citizens. Let’s see which of the candidates will step up and deal with the fundamental issues facing average, working Americans. I, for one, don’t expect much.
I have health insurance that is supposed to be 100% coverage, but the insurance agency keeps denying my claims, a practice that most of them do (even if the claim is valid) in order to get out of paying. 30% of the money from our insurance policies goes directly to the insurance company for profit, CEO Salaries, lobbying and advertising. That is billions of dollars that could be used to insure everyone.
That is why I am voting for Dennis Kucinich as he will implement a single-payer not-for-profit Health Care system for EVERYONE.
kucinich.us