Emotionally exploitive agenda? Not really...it's about as accurate an explanation of why we -must- fix this ripoff we call health insurance as you could find. It's not the commercial or the agenda that's exploitative, it's the health insurance industry itself that is exploiting all of us.

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Does REM have 2 trillion lying around for "free" healthcare? Because the government don't, and it don't have the money to pay for what does now.

Whenever someone says government doing Anything will "cut costs" they should be turned into a living traffic cone on a freeway.

2 Trillion? You know that's 180 Billion less then the Americans are paying for healthcare now. And for that we could have a system that covers everyone, where no one goes bankrupt from unexpected medical costs? Sounds great man.

Also you know you have the federal government to thank for the freeway system. But I'm sure you'd argue an endless series of ad hoc, unregulated, privately owned toll roads would have been more efficient.

Quantum, you can't really compare the current costs with the ones which would result from a goverment run system as the latter would implement a social insurance model, rather than an actuarial one which is so punishing for people who have the bad luck to be risky customers for private companies. This explains why the rest of the developed world pays less per capita for health care, yet offers more people better care.

You may find this enlightening: http://www.gladwell.com/2005/2005_08_29_a_hazard.html

The numbers these people were showing on their signs shocked me. As a Canadian I've always been aware that US private health care premiums were higher than what I pay but I had no idea they were as high as some of these people were indicating. So can someone tell me what does a typical single person pay for a policy that covers everything, with no deductibles, no maximums and no denials of coverage for pre-existing conditions. Currently I'm paying $672 per year which amounts to about 2.25% of my after tax income. Of course that's going to change ... it looks like our latest budget is going to jack that up by about 12% or around $750 per year. Just curious.

I'd be surprised if you can even get such a policy here, nanrod. Every policy I've ever seen has all of those conditions.

Just to toss out an example, I have what I consider to be a pretty good insurance package for my wife and myself. Small copays at the doctor's office and decent pharmacy copays. Now, this was not an individual policy, but rather a policy I got from my last employer that I carried over on my own when I was laid off (thanks to a federal provision called COBRA, we do have that right). The cost for our coverage was approximately $700 per MONTH, although the stimulus package picked up some part of insurance coverage via COBRA for a while, which brings it down to $460.

When I was working, my employer paid for this, so getting laid off was a double-whammy...not only did I lose my income, but my cost of living skyrocketed. Which may have something to do with my exceedingly sour attitude of late. Watching any hope I had of ever retiring melt away isn't making me happy with the jackasses who try to tell me just how great our health care is, nor the assholes who destroyed our economy for their own profit.

>> ^Stormsinger:
Emotionally exploitive agenda? Not really...it's about as accurate an explanation of why we -must- fix this ripoff we call health insurance as you could find. It's not the commercial or the agenda that's exploitative, it's the health insurance industry itself that is exploiting all of us.


Storm - I am wary of any collages which involve music and one side of the issue, but nonetheless with the unfocused and uninformed vitriol that has been expressed at town halls, I can hardly chastise MoveOn for its representation of actual facts, even if it seems bent on just bringing tears to my eyes. So emotionally exploitive? Yes. Wrong? I couldn't think so.

QM - Clearly there needs to be reform that goes into altering fee for service - the reason the industry is so messed up is because it, like lots of "rights" we have in this country, all come down to a profit margin. A plan that would focus on better quality service and preventative care will in the long run decrease costs.

I worked at a company where one of the things I ended up having to do a lot was to mediate between health care insurance companies and their customers, and it always boiled down to money. When you are telling an old lady who devoted decades of her life to a company, calling from a phone at the Walgreen's pharmacy, that she can't get her heart medication because her bank messed up her direct deposit and her insurance isn't willing to talk to her until they see money, then the system is flawed.

*doublepromote

About the money issue, I've read a lot that sugguests americans would actually SAVE money with a public option because of the intense regulatory bodies overseeing a market that has currently run rampant.

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Double-Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 11:47pm PDT - doublepromote requested by JiggaJonson.

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Tags for this video have been changed from 'public health option, REM' to 'public health option, REM, very scared for this world, for me' - edited by calvados

My employer pays about $66 a month, (as stated on my pay stub), for my extended medical - no premiums, for a family of 4

EDIT: Oh ya, I'm in Canada Eh, so that's in CDN funds.