How many of you have health insurance?

My wife is a nurse and we probably have some of the best health insurance available at the smallest of costs to us. That's a perk of working in the health care industry I guess.

I'm an American citizen who moved to Canada after she got married almost 4 years ago. I'm not sure what you guys are talking about when you say you'll have to "pay more taxes" if you have nationalized health-care in the US.

When I lived in Wisconsin approximately 40% of my earnings were deducted per check for things like federal and state income tax, FICA whatever the hell that is, and social security which I'm pretty sure I'll never see. I also had no health-care after I graduated from high-school until I got a job that provided really crappy health-insurance where I had to pay $500 out of pocket per year before my insurance would pay for anything. That was without including the co-pay and any medication I may need.

Here in Canada approximately 35% of my checks are deducted per pay-period for income tax, and if I walk into a clinic I pay nothing and receive whatever health care I need. Granted, sales tax is higher here especially on things like cigarettes ($10.00 plus per pack). If you smoke a lot of your money goes into the health-care system which personally I have no problem with and I'm a smoker (although trying to quit.)

I have bcbs but I pay 220 per month for it and Im the only one thats on it. I do not have a company that pays any of it. I took it upon myself because the government and companies dont give a dam about you.

I am a nurse, I work in a nursing home, and let me tell you there is a lot of waste going on within our current healthcare system that most ppl don't even know about. Example: In all nursing homes when a patient is put on a medication, then taken off, (like for example an antibiotic that is later found to not be needed) that medication, which comes in packages of 30 tabs is put into a box and later flushed down the toilet. We are not allowed to redestribute these meds, nor does the Rx take them back. It's illegal to give them to anyone else, and the patient is not allowed to give them to other family members.

If a patient is put on say a heart med and later the doctor increases or decreases the dosage the original pills are thrown in the waste box. This is true of all meds. Now that's ok if you think in terms of one person but I work in a small facility and we have a maximum capacity of 78 ppl. Think of that in terms of the massive amounts of nursing homes and other related institutions across this country. We're talking billions of dollars litterally down the toilet! Mind you, the patient is not reimbursed for the cost of the wasted meds, nor is medicare/medicade reimbursed (which we the tax payers pay for) I am required to do this every night on my shift in the mean time. I have no healthcare insurance and am diabetic and anemic. So I get to flush the very medications I need to be taking and can't afford down the toilet every night!

Why don't I have medical insurance being in the healthcare industry? Because where I work the insurance they offer cost's $250 per month for myself and one child. The deductable is $1000 per year for each of us and $4000 a piece if one of us is hospitalized. I'm a single parent and I just can't afford these rates. In the mean time I'm 45 years old I'm already diabetic with anemia and at the age where I'm facing menopause, strokes, heart disease, etc... Would I like to see a community health insurance program similar to Canada and Australia? Hell yes! Do I trust our governement to give it to us? Hell No!

I already know how they are working with the pharmisutical companies to milk us for money and I don't think that's going to change by giving them free reign over the whole system. I think what we really need is a healthcare system that is a seperate entity from the federal or state government and the cost should have a cap on it voted in by the public. How this would be accomplished I have no clue, but I know for a fact that government involvement isn't going to do anything but screw us all!

Washingtonians (State, not DC) have had Basic Health for decades. When we had it, I think I paid $15 a month for a family of 3. It was great. Since we moved out of state, we've not had insurance thanks to greedy capitalist pig employers, and when I break a bone- I set it myself.

Hillary, help us.

what happens if you dont pay this 20dollars? Will you be fined? What will happen? Thats what im concerned about. No i dont have healthcare at the moment abd havent had it for 10 years (self employed). And i have paid about 4 grand at the dentist this month out of pocket.

I just cant buy into anything hildawg says , thats just my opinion. I cant believe her

Currently, I have great health insurance. It is thru the military (Tricare) and is pretty cheap every month. Ive never had to pay any out of pocket expenses.

Before military insurance, I have always had it. Lucky? Maybe, but I have always worked for companies who carried it. That is one thing that had to be offered when I took a job. No insurance, I don't work for them.

I do not want to pay for other people's health care. Why? Because not everyone takes care of themselves. Many people smoke or drink themselves to death. And I do not want to pay for their choice to harm their body. Im against abortion, so I do not want to be paying for them.

I also think the entire welfare system needs an overhaul. It allows *some* people to become very lazy and complacent. I see this would happen with health care. Too many people not covering THEIR SHARE. What happens when THOUSANDS of people don't pay that $20??? Do I then have to cover them? Heck no!

Also, the government cant manage ANYTHING correctly. There is NO WAY they could manage health care.

No way I will ever support this.

I am Canadian. I just got the cadillac treatment for prostate cancer. I was going to bitch about the $18 parking at the hospital...then I thought about it and shut up, cuz that's ALL it cost me. Need I say more?

I've got Blue Cross BLue Shield through work and pay about $450 a month for the family for my part. The thing I've noticed is that I have coverage for treatments if I get sick, but there is no preventative care coverage. Seems to me that it would be cheaper for a company to help its customers and employees stay healthy than have to cover them after they get ill.
Think of all the money saved if folks could avoid sick days or workman's comp time just with some preventative care! One thing I've not seen in the conversation so far is the constitutionality of a govt. run healthcare system. I believe that there is no enumerated power in the constitution for the government to administrate such a plan.
Now I realize that we already have medicare and medicaid, but we also have the darn IRS too. At present we are paying way too much in for the return on our investment. If I saw my IRA tanking the way I see the government spending like drunken sailers I'd pull my money in a heartbeat.
This is the point where my open heart hits my already overly stretched wallet. I don't want folks not to have good healthcare if they need it, but I want a program that is a good investment for everyone also. We can't give everyone a right without expecting some responsibility also. If we start ordering the haves to pay for the have not's , but the haves can't participate in the plan then that borders on a famous saying..." From each according to his ability...to each according to his need. 'Karl Marx'"

My Husband and I do not have Health Insurance. We do have Health Care. We have had health care for the 20 years we have been married. Health care is him and I tending to each others illness, whether that be a cold or his diabetis, stitches or what ever else ails us.

We pay cash for all our medical supplies. This includes his diabetic medicenes. Insulin and all that. I went to the doctor for the first time in 20 years, not good. I had the HPV virus. How that happened I dont know.

Surgery and hospital cost 14K + for about a 15 minute surgery and about an 2 hour wait before surgery.

Hillary does not care whether you live or die or have medicenes. She cares about being elected. Period.

We need to wake up and see that the universe does not revolve around our own self centered me me me thoughts.

Pay your way, if you cant, die. Chisel your way through life. Folks have money and folks dont have money. That is how it is.

Let's see...trust the government to take of our health care...hmm. Chech the track record:

Social Security. My yearly statement of what to expect upon retirement has an additional paragraph that my father's doesn't that basically states "Don't expect any of this to be here when you retire." I was born in 1970 for those keeping score at home.

Ecconomic Stimulus Checks: People are now begining to recieve the second letter stating that your check must be counted as income on your 2008 tax return. $200billion borrowed from China, given out to populace to ease the burden of skyrocketing prices of essentials (not calculated in inflation estimates btw) so the ecconomy keeps buying goods produced in China and the government can tax your "windfall". HAHAHAHAHA. Suckers.

Insurance companies make money by investing monthly premiums into the stock market and Universal Health Care will remove about 1/3 of that money from investors, brokers, start up companies, and put about half of the workers in the insurance companies in the unemployment line. With 1/3 of the month premiums vaporised the insurance companies will be forced to adjust home and auto premiums accordingly which comes from who's pocket again? $20 per month in addition to how large of an increase in visible and hidden taxes? $10 pack of cigarettes? $8/gal gasoline? Sound familar to those in countries that have a UHC?

Final question should be who is supposed to be helped with this crazy idea? Hilary into the history books for being the sole wrecking ball for the US ecconomy (and quite possbly the entire world ecconomy by extention) perhaps? Because I highly doubt it will be the individuals that die or experience undue hardships waiting for simple surgeries to be performed. Like having a blown knee scopped but being unable to work (with bills piling up) until it is done or having to hobble in pain on their feet 8-10 hours in a factory or resturaunt like a wounded animal.

Maybe it is just me, but a better plan would be investing in palm lights and termination chambers a la Logan's Run for a less painful and more humane way to go. She would still keep the crown for the dumbest blonde of all time and still hated by the world for screwing it up. But at least it would be more efficient and perhaps less messy in the end.

I have health insurance through my employer and always have.
It seems silly to me to think the government can run socialized insurance any better than they run public schools or transit systems.
In fact give me a list of things the government does right,then consider adding health care.

reply to post by MareNostra


Hiyah MareNostra,

Thanks for your post I was just going to post about a friend of mine who lives in Canada, the poor man has needed his gallbladder out for 16 months now, he's scheduled to have it out in June sometime he told me.

Meanwhile he has painful gallbladder attacks where he has to go lie down for 3 hours until the pain passes. And here your post pops up! Thanks for giving us an inside look at the Canadian system!

Could you please elaborate as well on how much you and your Canadian counterparts are taxed on average for your Canadian dollar? I find this fascinating.

Also, if you have 6 hour waits in the ER for non-life threatening things, and it takes you a month to get into a family doctor, and most likely a year or more to get into a specialist, and according to my Canadian friend with the bad gallbladder, who's been waiting for his operation for almost a year and a half....I wonder which system is truly better then?

I pay $76.00 a month through my job, have way lower taxes then you all...and can get into my family doctor 98% of of the time the day I call or the next day for sure unless he's out of town, then I still get in to one of his associates... that day or the next...Now the emergency room is jammed and depending on what shape you're in I have waited for 3 hours to get stitches in my head from a car accident...so probably depending on how big of a city you live in here or there, that's probably the same.

my MRI's and C.A.T scans are all free as well...and I have a $10 co-pay on prescriptions which I could care less about since I am not being prescribed anything right now....

The government here, I don't know about there, is ridiculously inept, no matter the party in power, and they don't spend the money they take from our taxes with any sort of fiscal responsibility as it is, and I see no reason to give them more to finance the HUGE fiasco that would ensue, if they were to get their hands on the health care system and the huge tax revenues that would supposedly go to pay for it.

reply to post by Ahabstar


Dude you stated everything that I was about to type out. After the government's track record for just about everything they have managed, why on earth would anyone want to let them run our healthcare. The government is very inefficient and wasteful. On top of that, I definately do not want to be paying for everyone else. As another poster has added, not everyone is taking the same care of themselves. It will not be fair for me to take precautions that someone else will not be, thus, they will be going to the doctor 5 times as much as I do.

Imagine how much money the government could invest in subsidizing the current healthcare system if we stopped trying to spread our republic to the middle east and rebuilding countries that we should not even be in. How much would money could be reinvested into our economy if we shut down some of the bases that we have needlessly all over the world?

Hillary you say? I say vote Ron Paul... for real freedom.. .. .

Aaron

I have health insurance for now.

Last week I lost my Social Security card so I had to go get a replacement.

Yesterday I had to renew my drivers license so I waited in line at the DMV.

Today I ran out of stamps so that means I'll have to wait in another long line at the US Post Office.

It's now apparently obvious if it's run by the government there is always a long wait involved, so Nationalized Healthcare will be no different.

I actually lost my health insurane after I turned 21, im 23 right now, I've had a ton of jobs but all the jobs around here no matter how good paying will always offer one hour under full time so they dont have to give you health insurance. I've been screwed not having health insurance, I got a chest infection and had to got get a perscription for them and I was charged 4 grand just to tell a doctor my symptoms and then write me out a perscription for anti-biotics with out even checking my symptoms. I also had to pay 120 for the anti-biotics, 100 for a inhaler, and 75 for this other bottle of medicine which all helped me wonderfully but I'm in debt and my credit is shot now... so I did what every young american does when there in my situation, I joined the military, luckily enough I was smart enough for the air force so I wont be on the front lines.

Originally posted by LordBaskettIV
If you are sick, then pay for it yourself. If you can't, that is no ones fault but yours. Why should we pay so thousands of people who should be dead can sit around and breed and waste others money? This is a constitutional republic, NOT a democracy. Go fend for yourself or move to europe, THATS how america works.

It sure is. Screw the weak, pillage the poor, and only the able will survive.

Why, it almost sounds like a concentration camp...

reply to post by b.monki


So the doctor ran zero tests on you, and all you did was tell him your symptoms and then get a prescription and that cost you 4 grand as you say? That is 4,000 dollars US currency? I would have to say that you perhaps mistyped an extra zero on that even if you went to the emergency room. I had a CAT scan done once without insurance and my bill after the entire visit was about 2,000 dollars. So I am having trouble beleiving your story of there being no tests done and it was just a verbal visit that cost you that much.

Originally posted by mattguy404
Why, it almost sounds like a concentration camp...

Why should I pay for your healthcare?
Where does it end? Since having a vehicle is almost a necessity these days, should I pay for you to have a car also? What about paying for you to have electricity?

reply to post by Aaron_Justin


no, i didnt type an extra 0 it was 4 grand for the emergency room visit, at st rose hospital in hayward, ca... it was my own fault as I later found california has free medical for all at the county hospitals... it got knocked down too 2 grand as I got this self pay discount.. but yes 4 grand total, knocked down to like 2, 225 somthing cents. all charges for different hospitals are different...