How Health Care Stole Your Pay Raise - The Atlantic Business Channel

Kenny, It's about timing. Friday afternoon or Saturday gives an article more exposure. Title and picture are also important. Look at the response the awful picture of the person in a mental ward with crap smeared everywhere got. The picture had nothing to do with socialized health care and the whole piece was garbage. Unfortunately people responded. National Enquirer marketing!

In one day this article that is of such importants has fallen to 229. I fear evil is winning again, we are a third world country.

You are so right Kenny, and health care costs are one of the main reasons our jobs went overseas. If someone would start a recall on Max Baucus I think some of our legislators might find a way to vote for HR 676. Even the stupidest of them will understand that all the insurance money in the world won't do them a bit of good if the voters turn against them. We want single payer health care.

Three-fourths of the American public want a public option. The big insurance companies don't. The choice is obvious. Let your congressional representatives know that you're taking notes, and that you'll review them next time your asked to vote or contribute.

Atul Gawande is one of my favorite medical writers -- I mean writer of stuff comprehensible by educated lay persons. I first found him in The New Yorker, and subsequently bought his book Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science.

He has a really fascinating article in a recent issue of The New Yorker, an article I think anyone wishing to be an informed participant in this debate ought at least to skim:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/06/01/090601fa_fact_gawande?currentPage=...

[Disclosure: My wife and I are currently struggling with BC/BS about whether they'll pay for medication to prevent the recurrence of her breast cancer, and for my coronary artery disease.]

The only way that this is going to become reality and be worth a damn at the same time is if Obama steps up to the plate and uses his clout of the people to get it pushed through. He needs extremely publicized and viewed public addresses, he needs to call on the people to put pressure on there congress men and women for what they want, and he needs for them actually understand what the differences in the proposals are, how they will effect them personally. Roosevelt was enormously popular in his time and he was able to continueally captivate the American people with his fire side chats, this president needs to do something of the same, if the people are not involved in this we will continue down our laissez-faire path.

Someone earlier mentioned that if we keep it in the public light it will get hammered through... I think they are right, but in our government, when something gets hammered through the analogy is more apt than initially intended, because you do not recognize it on the other side it has been so beaten and shredded, we can not afford for this to fail, if it fails it will be used as a whipping boy model... FOREVER! So if you are really serious, if you really want this, start writing letters, to congress, to the president, to the lobbiest, to anyone you can think of, and get others to do the same...

And people have long since blocked or have started ignoring the old grass roots emails and phone calls, this has to be a new movement...

Yeah right. The CBO is projecting a 1.8 trillion cost to insure 16 million people in 10 yeas leaving some 37 million uninsured. And that is without single payer. We all know how CBO estimates wind up half of reality so the cost of even Kennedys bill is not known. A single payer system will cost even more, result in rationing of health care like Britain and Canada, destroy private companies and solve nothing except to enact more control over the people.

This is a stupid idea. I don't want some government minion determining what treatment we get.

For years the pro abortion crowd has bee saying that an abortion is between a doctor and the patient. Lets apply that standard to all of medical care.

maybe with single payer my job will finally promote us worthy AR clerks to full time.

my experience, if anyone cares to hear it: i can confidently say i and two others in the AR department (of 5) are more than deserving of full time (30+ hours a week). we were working up to 35 hours a week. the company cut everyone back to 29.5 hrs/wk so we wouldn't be considered full-time by the new handbook policies and thus they don't have to offer us benefits, and the hired one more person (now there's 6 of us) to cover the workload. everyone knows it's largely due to health insurance, which the company pays half and employees pay half. the math equates to at least $300.00 less a month for me, which can be thought of as, among other combinations, (a) utilities (b) food or (c) car work, dental work, health clinic costs (lower than my regular doctor), and new glasses i desperately need but can no longer afford to work into my budget. yet somehow, it still has to happen. i already spend $2.00 a month on ramen which supplies lunch at work (no, i don't love ramen THAT much, but convince myself and my coworkers that i do). i already spend in such a fashion as to have as much left over for necessities (outlined in possibility (c)). there's nothing else i can do.

and yes: i'm still amazingly grateful that i have a job to cover utilities and food and gas and etc. i'm also grateful to have a fiance with a job who contributes to the finances equally and who is currently working my sudden loss of monthly income into his budget so i can get new glasses and read street signs again.

It's coming eleganza I haven't felt this pumped in a long time, I feel like I'm on a surf board and about to catch the biggest wave in the ocean. Thats funny I don't surf!

Kenny what frustrates me more than I am able to articulate is how people keep voting against their own interests..why they keep supporting the current system even as it is bankrupting them is confounding as Hell to me...I agree with you 100% ...I just want to see sooner rather than later thats all

Eleganza it is some what disappointing so far but the battle is not over by a long shot. The President is noticing that his favorable rating is dropping and this might have something to do with. Keep up the fight at these rates we will get it soon, because nobody will be able to pay for it in a couple of years.

Great post again kennymo....do we all gotta pitch in on an island and invite doctors with promise of a beautiful hut and a Jimmy Buffet lifestyle or what?!?

If our president with a majority in the house and the senate cannot get this passed then it will never pass....I am personally disappointed in his weak approach, I wish he would seize the moment and the opportunity to get this thing passed....much the way that Lyndon Johnson got the civil rights bill passed over HUGE opposition...man up and make some demands...I'm not interested in some bipartison kume ba yah...I'm interested in getting this thing implemented and soon!

Excellent info! Thanks.

Very good article! thought the graph was very telling.

Thanks artemis6 I think your right on with your comment.

If this can be kept in the public eye for long enough , single payer might have a better chance . Hammer it home !

Thanks jh64487 for your comment I get it and I hope a lot more get it.

yeppers

I hope as many people as possible can read this article, it is what is holding our economy hostage.

And if you think your covered with your worker insurance through your company, think again not only Am I insured but I payed for 75% of my colonoscopy a preventive test for men over 50 that in the long run could save an insurance company thousands of dollars if cancer is caught early. But now I'm looking at a stress test bill of 400 dollars since heart disease runs in my family and my doctor recommended. What an insurance provider I have and many of don't realize have the same coverage.