Chatterbox

The only problem with that:

Sawbones — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:25:41 GMT

that even when "disaster" hits, the costs that are covered by most insurance policies will still leave enough in deductibles, etc. to ruin a lot of people - it's the reason that such a large number of bankruptcies are triggered by major medical problems. And that assumes that you're actually covered by your insurance - keep in mind that if a true disaster hits, your insurance company is going to be doing its level best to deny coverage for whatever reason it can find.

Re: Help help! My productivity based wage increases have fallen

Bondsman — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 06:09:21 GMT

EASYRIDER:
Your quote 'everyone pays in a lttle bit' A 'little ' is the key word. Health Insurance is incredibly expensive now and excludes a great many people. It is NOT insurance when you have a big pile of exclusions and you can be dropped at a moments notice.You are right about everyone chipping in to pay for a disaster and that is exactly what National Health Insuance is. EVERYONE pays into it and EVERYONE is covered. That is the way the rest of the world does it. America just doesn't get it yet. But we are starting to get there.

what will happen though is SOME people will have to pay in to it and EVERYONE will take from it.... hmmm, sounds like a problem.

Re: Help help! My productivity based wage increases have fallen

doodahman — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 22:39:01 GMT

Bondsman:
doodahman:

Stop being such a dumbass, please. The insurance is exactly supposed to be a payout to me-- a portion of the compensation I earn with my labor in the form of a benefit. Only it gets negotiated between the insurers and the HR department, and the bottom line gets taken out of what would ordinarily have been paid to me in wages.

I'm sorry, you're just wrong. The idea behind insurance is that everyone pays in a little bit, so there's a big pile of money for the few people that have major expenses. Healthy people aren't supposed to get a "return" on their health insurance.

Maybe you're trying to say that the benefit itself is a "payout", which is true, but it's hardly what most people consider a payout.

When unions negotiate for medical benefits IN LIEU OF wage increases, that makes that benefit part of the employees' earned compensation. We all have gotten health insurance from our employers IN LIEU OF wage increases. It made sense only because originally, the company due to group rates, could get better coverage for the dollar than we could individually. That hasn't been the case now for a long time, or to the extent that it is, it's only because the private insurance rates are artificially inflated due to the way the system is set up-- they have a captive market, control the alternatives, and people can't go without insurance (maybe for themselves, but they've got kids and loved ones to consider).

So, when the burden goes from the company to the feds, whatever isn't going to the feds to cover the new public insurance ought to be given back to the employee as a wage increase. I don't understand what it is that you're saying that makes me wrong.

But, at least you were nice about it.

Re: Help help! My productivity based wage increases have fallen

EASYRIDER — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 21:23:55 GMT

Your quote 'everyone pays in a lttle bit' A 'little ' is the key word. Health Insurance is incredibly expensive now and excludes a great many people. It is NOT insurance when you have a big pile of exclusions and you can be dropped at a moments notice.You are right about everyone chipping in to pay for a disaster and that is exactly what National Health Insuance is. EVERYONE pays into it and EVERYONE is covered. That is the way the rest of the world does it. America just doesn't get it yet. But we are starting to get there.

Re: Help help! My productivity based wage increases have fallen

Bondsman — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:45:52 GMT

doodahman:

Stop being such a dumbass, please. The insurance is exactly supposed to be a payout to me-- a portion of the compensation I earn with my labor in the form of a benefit. Only it gets negotiated between the insurers and the HR department, and the bottom line gets taken out of what would ordinarily have been paid to me in wages.

I'm sorry, you're just wrong. The idea behind insurance is that everyone pays in a little bit, so there's a big pile of money for the few people that have major expenses. Healthy people aren't supposed to get a "return" on their health insurance.

Maybe you're trying to say that the benefit itself is a "payout", which is true, but it's hardly what most people consider a payout.

Re: Help help! My productivity based wage increases have fallen

doodahman — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:21:10 GMT

Bondsman:

Insurance isn't supposed to be a pay-out to you, but coverage in case of disaster. I pay 3k a year in house and car insurance, and I don't whine about how it's draining my retirement fund. It's INSURANCE. If your house burns down and costs 750k to rebuild, it gets rebuild.

Similarly if somebody like you needs open heart surgery, they get it, and it doesn't cost them 100k.

Pull your head out, that's what insurance is.

BTW, the reason health insurance is so expensive is that the UNINSURED still get treated just like you do, and your insurance is what pays for them. That won't change in socialized medicine. I doubt that Obama is going to tax the poor to pay for their own care, so the 40+% of people that don't pay federal income tax won't be paying the health insurance tax either, you will.

Same amount, but you'll pay the government, and therefore be happier about it.

Stop being such a dumbass, please. The insurance is exactly supposed to be a payout to me-- a portion of the compensation I earn with my labor in the form of a benefit. Only it gets negotiated between the insurers and the HR department, and the bottom line gets taken out of what would ordinarily have been paid to me in wages. You can capitalize the word "insurance" all you want, but it only makes you louder, not smarter.

As for whether all of the money now forked over on my behalf by my employer will be sucked in by the federal gov't in a universal or at least public option program, I doubt it. Some percentage may, but all of the information I've seen regarding the "socialist" medical systems in other countries shows that they have substantially less overhead, substantially less administrative costs, and a far better incentive to control costs by controlling the actual costs, not the benefits. Not to mention the fact that putting 200 million Americans under one program gives the administrators a tad bit of leverage to negotiate reasonable fees and costs.

There is no doubt that like any other political problems, the "haves" will moan and bitch and cry cry cry like little babies because someone whom they think is undeserving will be better off without having something squeezed out of them. But, that's a mental and spiritual problem of the "haves", not a political problem.

Oh, and you might consider the fact that the alleged 40% who pay no federal income tax (a stupid stat because every worker pays federal taxes-- excise taxes, phone taxes, and of course SSI), it's because they don't make enough money. I'm sure if they were to get wage increases that had kept up with the real cost of living and the real productivity gains, they'd be in a position to pay some federal taxes. But, once again, the "haves" and their mental/moral disease makes them want it both ways-- cheap labor, unlivable wages for half the nation's workers, AND have them chip in to finance a federal gov't that does nothing but dole out trillions to already rich motherfuckers for
services that benefit nobody but other "haves."

You'll never learn, because you don't have soul enough to get it.

Re: Help help! My productivity based wage increases have fallen

Bondsman — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:47:21 GMT

Insurance isn't supposed to be a pay-out to you, but coverage in case of disaster. I pay 3k a year in house and car insurance, and I don't whine about how it's draining my retirement fund. It's INSURANCE. If your house burns down and costs 750k to rebuild, it gets rebuild.

Similarly if somebody like you needs open heart surgery, they get it, and it doesn't cost them 100k.

Pull your head out, that's what insurance is.

BTW, the reason health insurance is so expensive is that the UNINSURED still get treated just like you do, and your insurance is what pays for them. That won't change in socialized medicine. I doubt that Obama is going to tax the poor to pay for their own care, so the 40+% of people that don't pay federal income tax won't be paying the health insurance tax either, you will.

Same amount, but you'll pay the government, and therefore be happier about it.

Help help! My productivity based wage increases have fallen

doodahman — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 17:20:38 GMT

and they can't get up!

I know this is of no concern to societal parasites like the lap monkeys who get paid for this tripe, but the most significant social cost of employer based health care is that it diverts wage gains from my pocket and those of my fellow employees into the pockets of shitbag insurance companies and fat, overcompensated doctors and hospitals who think that their medical degrees is an entitlement to be not just permanently comfortable, but pig rich.

At least six hundred bucks a month is what my employer pays to the fuckers at Blue Cross instead of me, for a policy in which my $500 deductible is somehow never met. I've contributed, directly or through my employer, probably a few hundred thousand dollars to the health insurance industry (that pays the salaries of a lot of administrators working tirelessly to deny benefits) and due to my (knock on wood/skull) ongoing good health, I haven't cost them dime one in almost twenty years.

That's my retirement fund, right there in the pockets of a bunch of rent seeking gougers who only exist and only make all that money because they've gotten control of the political process.

Oh, but forget all that. It's the empoyers that need help. Look Noah, if they employers are relieved of their current obligations to provide health care, why do the companies recapture that money? Most will have to go to pay for universal health care, and the rest ought to go to the workers because it's a benefit that they have earned and which is already calculated into the cost of labor. So according to you, the $6,500 a year in benefits I earn through my productive work now goes back to my employer and not me?

You fucktoad.

Unfortunately, chances are that's exactly what's going to happen. My earned benefits, now taken over by the gov't, will go back into the pockets of the fucking shareholders just like every other dimes' worth of productivity gains made BY WORKERS in the last three decades.