What is "Insurance"?

We are all going to pay for the "young and uninsured" no matter what. If they stay healthy and have to pay premiums, they are blessed. (That's the point of insurance - healthy people have to pay, too, or the companies would go out of business.) If young, healthy people get sick and are uninsured, Medical Assistance is going to pay for them via our tax dollars, or they will be denied, bankrupt and devastated. Then, instead of saying "it's not fair that you are young and healthy and have to pay for insurance" we'll turn on these same exact people who got unexpectedly sick and say "shame on you for not being responsible and having yourself covered". Any of us could get sick at any time - that's the point of making sure everyone is covered.

Most people I know who are uninsured or paying over 20% of their income (myself) for health insurance would be glad to pay anything less than $5000 before subsidies kick in; it would decrease my bill. We are really healthy, and we pay $7200 in annual premiums for an individual plan....one that also jacks up our rates without warning on a seemingly random basis. When I am struggling to pay my bills every month, what keeps me up at night is this decision:
1. Do I be "responsible" and fork over 20% of my income to my insurance company, leaving me with no savings and barely able to pay my bills, or 2. take my chances that I won't get sick, risking not only bankruptcy but also the risk that if I get diagnosed with something during my time without coverage or with crappy coverage, I will never be able to get affordable coverage for anyone ever again?

I'm not worried about being burdened by taxes. I'm worried about being abandoned by an insurance company that is supposed to "insure" my well-being and being abandoned by my fellow citizens who don't see us as all in this together.

Preamble to the US Constitution:
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I look forward to my socialized Medicare when I get older, and have hope we can find a way to ensure no one loses everything because, and on top of the fact that, they became ill or injured or just old! I'm not saying the plan is perfect as-is, but let's examine our intentions....are we poo-pooing anything our political opponents put out there, or are we trying to think creatively together as fellow citizens?

Remember: there is more to this legislation, including provision that the insurance companies must cover everyone regardless of pre-existing conditions. With more people to cover overall (only achieved by making currently healthy people get covered), that will help them make up the differences in taking on the expensive, unhealthy people who need and deserve health care. And by ensuring everyone preventive coverage, we'll spend less on expensive ER visits and emergency surgeries that cheaper, preventive care could have, well, prevented.


The above is in response this original email, subject "And here's your tax increase":

OBAMACARE: LOSING EVERYONE

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published in the New York Post on September 21, 2009

The elderly were the first group to turn against President Obama's health-care pro posals, alienated by the plans to cut $500 billion cut from Medicare. The young and the uninsured may be the next to jump ship -- out of worry over about the huge premiums they'd have to pay.

Requiring everyone to buy insurance will impose a massive tax on all who now are uninsured. The Congressional Budget Office projects that it would force the middle-income uninsured to pay on average more than 15 percent of their income.

The poor will still have Medicaid. But for those earning more, the required premiums will be worse than any tax increase. For example, CBO estimates that when the program is fully implemented -- by 2016 -- an individual earning $32,400 a year would have to pay $4,100 in premiums before getting any subsidy. With deductibles and co-payments, he'd have to shell out $5,600 a year, or 17.3 percent of his income. A family of four, making $80,000 a year, would have to pay about $10,500 in premiums alone -- with deductibles and co-payments, up to $15,000 or just under 20 percent of income.

And if they don't buy insurance, they'll face federal fines that begin to approach these same premium levels. They won't be able to buy what they truly need -- catastrophic-only coverage at a lower premium -- that won't satisfy ObamaCare's "minimum insurance" mandate.

The young and uninsured will catch on: This bill is designed to force healthy people who don't have health insurance -- and may neither need nor want it -- to buy it anyway, in order to raise the money to subsidize those who do need it.

Obama has pledged only to increase taxes on the rich. But his program essentially taxes the core of the middle class (those making $30,000 to $80,000). It will make them overpay in order to pick up the slack for others who need the extra coverage.

In other words, health-care "reform" is a health-care tax dressed up as a program to cover the uninsured.

No matter how Democrats get the money to cover those who need insurance, they offend supporters that they need to pass the bill:

* If they get the money from more Medicare cuts, they alienate the elderly still further.

* If they get it from raising the deficit, they lose moderates.

* If they hike taxes to do it, they lose the "Blue Dog" Democrats who've gone on record as opposing such increases.

* If they don't increase the subsidies, they lose the uninsured themselves.

The latest data from Scott Rasmussen's poll of those who lack health insurance indicates that they're starting to turn skeptical about the Obama plan. It's supposed to help them, yet they back it by only 58 percent to 35 percent -- and only 30 percent support it strongly.

More to the point, only 35 percent feel it will improve the quality of their health care -- and, by 41-26, they feel the cost of their care will go up, not down, under the plan.

Having the uninsured -- the stated object of Obama's compassion -- turn against his reform would be the most lethal cut of all.