Please sign this petition. Take the profit motive out of our health care system. Having a profit motive for health care coverage does not give you better health care or ever bring costs down. Don't let the Republicans keep lying to you about the horrors of the public options for covering your health care costs. I have been disabled for years and am on Social Security and Medicare covers my medical treatment. I have never had medicare insist I go to one doctor or hospital or another. It covers all the medical care I get, it never excludes charges or ups my copay. It covers my mental health costs as well as my visits to my cardiologist and internist. It covers tests. It covers hospital stays and it covers emergency room visits.
Before I got coverage under Social Security I was paying for private coverage through United Healthcare. I was self employed as all of us working in the entertainment industry with an agent are. Most of us are considered contract labor. We have no safety net. The cheapest coverage for an individual in the late 1990's was $500.00 a month. The moment I got a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder, United Healthcare upped my monthly cost from a very hefty $500. a month for a single person, to $1,000. a month for one person. They also increased my copay. And they hassled me over every charge. I hate those bloodsuckers. Never again will I let a private for-profit company get between me and medicare. It is only Medicare part D, the Bush engineered prescription drug program that requires a private company to suck money out of the trust. This is the Republican toe in the door approach to Medicare. They will try very hard to convince you that you need them to manage your entire medicare coverage. This is a lie. It is utter bullshit! They want to get between you and medicare so they can make a buck. Fuck them! They have been sucking our blood way too long and abusing the right to any trust at all. If you like your private coverage, just wait until you get a diagnosis that will get costly. Then see how much you like them.
Thursday, May 14, 2009
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I've been a managed care coordinator in surgery departments for the past 15 years and all I can say, without really going off at great length, is that everybody has a managed care plan when it gets down to the nitty gritty of needing treatment.
I pray for our cancer patients to qualify for Medicare.
Thanks Susan. I'm about to turn 65 and despite the fact that I've been on Social Security and Medicare for years, all the private for profit insurance companies and trying to convince me that I will not be able to navigate the bureaucratic nightmare that is medicare with out their assistance. I keep telling them that 1st, I am already quite happy with the just medicare option, and 2nd, I'm on a do not call list, and 3rd, I hate their money grubbing lying asses. Now all I can do to save the rest of the poor unsuspecting souls about to turn 65 is that they DO NOT NEED A FOR PROFIT PRIVATE INSURANCE COMPANY TO MANAGE MEDICARE FOR THEM!
BRUTAL...
P.S.
how did I get lucky enough to find you and this blog ..thanks
just pushing 50 :) and lucky enough to have pretty good coverage through my hubby's journeyman lineman's job..
feel'n pretty damn lucky....
mona
Gaffer Girls, I found you and lured you to me by hypnotizing you into following me home. Don't worry, I will never lie to you or steer you wrong. And you are on my feed reader so every time you post I will be right there to comment.
I am signing and I am sad that this is still an issue in our country. I just watched Sicko again this week and it makes me crazy-mad-angry.
I signed. We need to get insurance companies out of healthcare!! I remember back when the junk bond bubble burst, the insurance companies were whining that they had to raise rates to make up for the money they lost in junk bonds. (They were called junk bonds for a reason.) They make bad investments and it's our fault so we have to pay for it??? Insurance may be a necessary evil for some things like home or car, but they have no business being in healthcare where they make money by refusing treatment to those that need it!!
One thing that pisses me off is that the insurance companies that do Medicare are paid more than ordinary Medicare costs to sweeten the deal so they will do Medicare. And this was done while claiming private companies would save the government money!! How in the hell is it saving money if the government is paying out more money???
If they have no incentive to make money then they won't have any incentive to provide you with the best care, thereby failing in the marketplace. Don't you know how this works?
The thing that always floors me are the dumb schmucks who will go on and on about not wanting "the government" to manage their health care because it'll lead to rationing -- what the fuck do they think the insurance companies are doing now? Whenever I see my doctors one of the first things they ask is "which insurance?" followed by "I'll have to see if they cover this." Blue Cross decides, not the doctor, just which drugs I'll get to take or which tests will be run.
Anyone catch CSI last night (Thursday)? Typical emergency room scene, patient being rushed in looking horrible, and there's someone standing there asking, before he's even into an examining room, "does he have insurance?" We need a single payer system like they have in civilized countries.
Dear Utah,
I love you and sympathize with the difficulties you have had, healthwise and insurance-wise. But I'm concerned about the viability of Medicare. We old farts are bleeding it dry! It's going to go broke in a few years. What then? Everyone wants coverage, but no one wants to pay for it. The money has to come from somewhere!
I don't trust the government to do anything right. It was their brilliant idea to launch the prescription drug plan, which is contributing to the eventual bankruptcy of our formerly great country. I just wish that someone in the government could add and subtact and realize that the money for all this government largesse has to come from somewhere, and continuing to borrow from China instead of taxing our citizenry is not the fiscally responsible route.
Holy crap. $1000 a month for health insurance! That's inhumane.
Personally, I think health insurance companies are bad actors and need to be kicked out of the health care industry. Period! However, I hear Switzerland (I think) has universal health care through insurance companies. Except, unlike Mass., they cap what insurance companies can charge. The insurers (so I hear) make their money, not by rationing, but by focusing more on preventive health care than expensive drugs and procedures. That's the best compromise I've heard so far. I know I'm going to dread whatever those lackeys in Congress are going to come up with this year. If only our country had some politicians with cojones!
It still amazes me how this country can't get its act together on a real health care plan for everyone. The health care industry has way too much power. And our President Obama doesn't seem to care to fight that battle. We need single-payer healthcare. Like the rest of the civilized world.
signed...after i pay all my bills and they take out my fee for medicare, i have less than $200 for gas/grociers and what evers.
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