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December 18, 2010 at 10:14 pm #597350
hooper1961Memberthe health care reform is going to adversely affect hundreds of thousands if not millions of americans who have flexible spending accounts. starting next year you will no longer be able to use your health savings account to buy over the counter medications such as aspirin, cold medications and the like. i have tried to contact patty murray’s office to get this item fixed to no avail.
December 18, 2010 at 10:19 pm #711550
JanSParticipanthealth care is not being reformed…health care insurance is. Yes, that’s nit picky…but…health care will remain the same…just how it’s paid for will be different. Self-employed=no flex account…I pay for that stuff out of my own pocket. Or I don’t use it. Chicken soup is the best cold medicine anyway :)
Happy Holidays, Hooper ! :)
December 18, 2010 at 10:32 pm #711551
hooper1961Memberthe reform is costing many americans more money! insurance is supposed to be risk based; i try to eat right and exercise thus my costs should be less than someone who does not, but noooooooooooooo the new system does not reward good habits!
December 18, 2010 at 10:38 pm #711552
JanSParticipantand who would be the judge of who does the right thing …or not? We all know of people who take the best care of themselves as possible, and still, health problems befall them. Do we judge each other? It’s not my job to tell you or anyone else that you’re doing things wrong, just because you do them differently than me.
December 18, 2010 at 11:57 pm #711553
hooper1961Memberi do not want to judge others, but insurance that is not risk based is not equitable. higher risk should mean higher premiums.
December 19, 2010 at 12:00 am #711554
charlabobParticipantInsurance may be risk based; basic health care should not be. Oddly, when it’s described honestly, most Americans approve of single-payer health care.
December 19, 2010 at 1:06 am #711555
JanSParticipanthooper…who decides what/who is higher risk?
December 19, 2010 at 1:12 am #711556
DPMemberThis is precisely why President Obama should have fought a principled fight for a single-payer system — even at the risk of losing this round.
Because of the President’s strategic error on this, the Left has been divided and reduced to squabbling with the Right over mere crumbs. We’ll be lucky if we even get to keep catastrophic coverage for the very poorest Americans.
Look, even though I don’t agree with hooper’s take on the question of who is entitled to health care, I have to agree with him that as long as you make health care a business, it’s not going to be a working business unless insurance companies are free to say who they can insure and for what price. Like it or not, that’s the way business works, folks. That’s a basic fact of capitalism, and it’s one that Obama didn’t seem to grasp.
—And that’s why he’s taking such a beating now. He should have just cut the insurance companies out of it from the get-go. That’s right: Obama should have just come right out and said, “Health care is a right, not a commodity!” Then he’d be arguing from a position of strength now, with millions of people solidly behind him.
Instead, all is confusion and despair . . .
December 19, 2010 at 2:51 pm #711557
JoBParticipantHooper1961
You can still purchase over the counter medications with flex ben dollars next year as long as You have a doctor’s prescription.
What You can’t do is self medicate
Which by the way makes flex ben policy consistent with USA tax policy regarding all medical expenses.
I am not in favor of this policy change either …
But in all fairness it was expected.
DP
Although the media didn’t report it a very vocal public demanded that single payer get a voice in the debate.
Unfortunately without press that voice was barely a whisper.
December 20, 2010 at 1:45 am #711558
DPMemberYou’ve got to think strategically about the Media, JoB. If a million people march on D.C. and then turn politely around and go home, the Media aren’t going to cover it. It’s not a right-wing conspiracy to suppress info; it’s just that MSM don’t consider it news, because large demos happen in D.C. all the time. Unless you’re dong something really new and different, the MSM are not interested, no matter how many people you have. They’re really into “entertainment,” not news.
BUT . . . if a million people march on D.C. and then STAY THERE, and a million more come the next day, and the day after that, and government starts to shut down, then you’d better believe the Media are going to cover it, because they’ll be thinking: “Hey! Something really interesting is going on here.”
But really, the focus has to be: What can we do to get the Government to notice us? and not What can we do to get the Media to notice us?
How well I remember that smug look on George W. Bush’s face in 2003 as he realized that after all the demonstrations were over and everybody had gone home, he could carry on with his war on Iraq. The anti-war demos of 2003 were mighty indeed, but Bush and company were well-prepared to wait out the demonstraters, and that’s just what they did.
Sadly, we on the Left did not make things nearly as uncomfortable for Bush as we should have, and Obama wrote the final postscript on that by decling to bring Bush and Cheney up on war crimes charges.
Now, as an example, of a strategy that has worked in recent times, let’s consider the Seattle WTO ministerial protests . . .
Penning the ministers in their hotels was an example of a relatively easy and non-violent direct action that had a huge practical impact. And the Media had to cover it, because they had no choice.
Similar actions can and should be done with health care as well, and I hope they will be. But I guess that depends on us.
December 20, 2010 at 8:33 am #711559
JoBParticipantDP…
are you aware that there was such a large progressive campaign over single payer to flood the offices of the senate and congress with emails, petitions, faxes and phone calls that switchboards were literally shut down.. and that unprecedented event wasn’t published in the mainstream news?
but let the tea party call and it is news.
did you miss that huge demonstration put on by a couple of comedians that was at least 3 times as large as Glen Beck’s little tea party,
3 times the size of the permitted crowd
and literally shut down the metro system in DC preventing an even larger crowd?
it would have been easy to miss. it didn’t get much coverage either.
reality bites..
December 20, 2010 at 1:48 pm #711560
redblackParticipanthooper: good for you. eat right and exercise all you want.
hopefully you won’t ever have lymphoma or leukemia – which can’t be treated or prevented with diet and exercise, yet would cause you to become a higher risk – and you won’t have to find out first-hand why the insurance industry shouldn’t be standing between you and your doctor.
also, it seems to me that an adequate “health savings account” would eliminate the need for insurance. is that the case? or do you save away for a rainy day and pay exorbitant premiums, too?
December 20, 2010 at 5:25 pm #711561
JoBParticipantDecember 21, 2010 at 3:40 am #711562
hooper1961Memberi have an apple too; whatever type is on sale
no i have a very high deductible plan to keep my monthly premium marginally affordable. it has already gone up thanks to the health reform and i expect it to go up more. thus explain to me how this is helping? i won’t even be able to by advil with my hsa next year!
December 21, 2010 at 3:41 am #711563
hooper1961Memberi have an apple too; whatever type is on sale
no i have a very high deductible health insurance plan to keep my monthly premium marginally affordable. it has already gone up thanks to the health reform and i expect it to go up more. thus explain to me how this is helping? i won’t even be able to by advil with my hsa next year!
December 21, 2010 at 3:58 am #711564
dobroParticipant“it has already gone up thanks to the health reform and…”
more fact-free jumping to conclusions…Most of the health reform functions have not even gone into effect yet. The insurance companies and corporate news sources are peddling this BS to people like you because they want you to act against your own self interest. The reason your premiums went up is because of insurance company greed and them trying to jam it as high as they can BEFORE the major health reform conditions kick in.
you obviously have access to the internet…do you ever research any of the spew you get from the corporate media or do you always just buy it lock stock and barrel?
December 21, 2010 at 4:42 am #711565
me on 28th Ave SWParticipantOver the counter medications can still be reimbursed using flexible spending accounts or health saving accounts with a prescription beginning in 2011. Inconvenient, but not impossible. My guess is that most physicians will adapt to this rapidly just as they did when the changes in requirements for written prescriptions went into effect earlier this year.
December 21, 2010 at 5:47 am #711566
hooper1961Memberbut that means wasting physicians time that is not productive.
the health care is going to cost low risk people more.
why not charge a 16 year old driver the same car insurance rate at a 45 year old? it is called risk that is a forgotten item in this discussion.
December 21, 2010 at 6:01 am #711567
JoBParticipantDecember 21, 2010 at 6:31 am #711568
me on 28th Ave SWParticipantOur current medical system is filled with ineffective policies that are time wasters. There is an entire industry that was formed with ICD9 and CPT coding. The public will cry they don’t want single-payer insurance or “socialized medicine” all the time disregarding that they are already subsidizing the uninsured that have no choice but to show up at the ER for treatment when needed. I also don’t get why people will argue that single-payer is “bad”, but yet that is what Medicare is and it’s considered good enough for our nation’s elderly? Medicare is the most efficient medical insurance policy I have ever dealt with (my father-in-law). It is much simpler than any of the policies I have ever had, and hospitals and medical facilities know how to work with it.
December 21, 2010 at 7:05 am #711569
JanSParticipantICD9 coding is going the way of..whatever, me. ICD-10 is being enabled pretty soon, I hear. I am a helalthcare provider that accepts most insurances, and know that once some of these health care INSURANCE changes take place, it will affect me in more ways than one. I will roll with it. But.HEALTH CARE itself will remain the same as ever…at least it will with me…that’s not being reformed..and right now I believe that the implementation date is in 2014 for most of the insurance reforms, so Hooper… stick to what you know – engineering.
And, me on 28th..Medicare…the most efficient plan, along with VA, touted as the best that there is in this country…are both run by..guess what? The government, not private industry…go figure!
December 21, 2010 at 1:58 pm #711570
redblackParticipanthooper: and you think the government is somehow at fault? because the insurance industry is screwing you over?
interesting.
it’s funny how you blame the entity that we, the people, can have some impact on. because we all know what happens when you try to complain to blue cross, huh?
December 24, 2010 at 7:15 pm #711571
hooper1961Memberthose of us using high deductible health insurance coupled with hsa’s are being screwed (it will cost us a lot more) by the health care reform
December 24, 2010 at 7:46 pm #711572
JanSParticipantso maybe you need to rethink your choices…nice that you have them…many of us don’t…
December 24, 2010 at 8:06 pm #711573
hooper1961Memberwhy the blank should i have to rethink my choice. i was perfectly satisfied with the choice i had; but do to the bitch murray (i have contacted her office numerous times to identify this flaw in the reform) i will have to pay a lot more and have less flexibility to use my hsa. how the blank is this fair?
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