Are you confused about Obamacare? Sick of listening to spin when your life is on the line? We thought so. It is still difficult to obtain a concise, clear picture on what is happening to America's health care. We gather below a few critical snippets of information which point to more impending disaster for the individually insured.
How many of us have tuned out the never ending Tea Party crazy rhetorical drum beat blasting Obamacare? With people whose only purpose in life is to shaft the middle class and poor, as a result, such folk have lost all credibility with most of America and thus tune them out we do. Over and over again we see the Republican agenda is clearly to stiff Americans on benefits they have earned, such as social security and Medicare.
The Dow hit a record high yet for most of America this means little. While some fawn and fan over the high rise stock market, here are some stories that actually matter to real people with real lives.
The most creative sector of the business community has a dagger at its heart in the form of the relentless, unyielding, and over burdening cost of health insurance. The self-employed and very small businesses have seen their insurance premiums climb 20% to 75% since 2009. To purchase an adequate family plan, a self-employed person will pays an amount 50% to 70% of the nation's median personal income, $32,000 a year, for family health plan. This includes premiums, deductibles, and out of pocket expenses. That is twice the cost for relatively generous plans at medium to large size companies. Very small businesses, two to twenty employees, pay about the same (Image: Paul Henman)
Wasn't health reform supposed to take care of just this sort of inequity? Didn't the title of the bill say it all? The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act There is no protection for the self-employed when they have these stark choices facing them due to unaffordable insurance rates. They can give up working for themselves; buy adequate insurance and take a huge hit to income; buy a substandard plan and hope that whatever comes up is covered; or, abandon insurance at real risk to their health and, in some cases, their lives.
The Obama administration is pre-announcing the regulatory reforms announcements (see their outline below), so much so one might miss what is coming out of Congressional hearings on the topic.
I believe that only ostriches can now deny the need for establishing a federal insurance resource center and a basic federal insurance regulatory structure.
Geither's response? Let's ignore the entire insurance industry. What's in a name? (AIG)
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