Health Care is killing us

I've written about health care a lot in this diary. It's something that I believe to be one of the most important problems we have to address in this country, health care costs are leading to the of the middle class. I have expertise in genomics which I believe will have a huge impact on health insurance and care costs and I have personal experience with health care costs and different systems..  Nationally, we already hit a milestone (not so good one) of health care costs that should be a warning.

Today I got another personally warning on how this is going to affect every one of us. Our family's health insurance is going up by 11.3% in January, 2006.

When we returned from Germany in 2002 we found the best health care we could at a reasonable price. I had a pre-existing condition of hypertension and we had an infant daughter.

It was Kaiser Permanente in CA. It cost us 428 dollars a month. That seemed steep, but some insurance companies wouldn't take us (my condition) and I was self-employed. So with a daughter, we had to get insurance.

This year it went up to 652 (after an increase the year before).

And today I received a letter saying the rate for 2006 will be 726.00/month.

That is 8,700 a year!  That is an 11.3% increase from this year.

that is a 70% increase in three years.

at this rate of increase, our health insurance costs will have doubled in less than 5 years.

There is little hope that most American families will be able to increase their wages by the same amount.

The time for universal health care is now.

•  Healthcare costs corporations $

  I think large corporations will soon be in favour of universal healthcare.  When that happens Republicans will start supporting it.  Democrats need to make this their issue before the Republicans do.

  by qw3rty on Fri Nov 18, 2005 at 02:18:13 PM PDT

  •  Toyota

    http://www.dailykos.com/...
    

    In addition to lower training costs, Canadian workers are also $4 to $5 cheaper to employ partly thanks to the taxpayer-funded health-care system in Canada, said federal Industry Minister David Emmerson.

    by qw3rty on Fri Nov 18, 2005 at 02:21:42 PM PDT

  •  totally agree

    in fact, as a small business owner, I would LOVE universal health care...

    we are in the process of finding health insurance alternatives to offer our employees (including ourselves!)

    and it's not easy and very expensive.

    universal health care would make the playing field a bit more even between small and large firms (small firms can't offer as good of health coverage)

    by wclathe on Fri Nov 18, 2005 at 04:08:54 PM PDT

•  I agree with you

  It's sad when health insurance costs as much as rent or mortgage. There's a lot wrong with this picture.
  

  by Leeserannie on Fri Nov 18, 2005 at 02:22:52 PM PDT

•  Democrats will

  eventually fully support Medicare as the single-payor universal system.  Rethuglicans will favor just dumping more of the cost on to the employees.  If Rethuglicans have their way we will soon be paying 60-70% of the cost of the insurance. Remember the main goal of the Rethuglicans is to make everyone else "have nots" while they remain the "haves".

  by roamer65 on Fri Nov 18, 2005 at 02:37:40 PM PDT

  •  Republicans

    also want to move away from employer-based insurance to everyone getting their own private insurance with HSA accounts and selling their ideas with tax cuts and the "ownership society" bullshit.

    Of course, the Republican plan is a great plan for the young and those who don't ever plan on getting sick. The reason for the lies they have to use to sell their healthcare plans is the same for other policies they are forced to lie about - environment, tax cuts for the wealthy, education...

    The Republicans have to lie about their health-care to such an extreme since they are so bad for most everyone while benefitting the very few.

    You really have to crank up the p.r./marketing (propaganda) in order to convince the vast majority of people to bend over and take it in order to benefit the few priviledged ones.

    The truth is so much simpler than lying, but the Republicans have to lie again and again on pretty much every issue, since their policies almost always benefit the few at the expense of the many.

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    by HairOnFire on Fri Nov 18, 2005 at 03:50:19 PM PDT