Can the government require me to pay health care executive salaries? Will they put me in jail?

[OregonBlue]

If I understand this right, the new health care plan would REQUIRE me to purchase health insurance (with subsidies if I cannot afford it). If the private plan's administrative costs are higher than those of government plans and there is no public option, then basically, the government is telling me I HAVE to subsidize health care executive salaries. What if I can afford it but choose not to. What if I refuse? Will they put me in jail?

[valerief]

1. They make you pay for war and faith-based initiatives and Dick Cheney's pension

and all kinds of things we don't want to pay for. This is no different. It's not really our money. The only money we get is what the military-industrial complex via the IRS lets us get.

[OregonBlue]

2. This is different. This is insurance. If I want to drive, they can require me to buy auto insurance.

What if I choose to get my health care in another country? What if I don't want to go to the doctor or hospital or whatever? This is not part of my taxes, this is requiring me to pay for insurance I may not want from a for-profit company. Don't see how that is constitutional.

[valerief]

3. I don't want insurance. I want single-payer. Might is always right, though. nt

[iamjoy]

10. Here's The Problem

You don't want to pay for insurance. Maybe you're young and/or healthy. Maybe you swear by natural remedies. Maybe you think our current medical system is little more than quackery, only slightly improved from the Middle Ages. Whatever.

Only, it's not that simple. Group plans work by spreading the risk. Put bluntly, the healty subsidize the sick. It only works by getting as many healthy people as possible to "buy" insurance. In this respect, it really doesn't matter if it's a single-payer government system, or a government subsidizing for-profit insurance companies. The healthy subsidize the sick. The alternative is only the rich get medical care. If you think it'slike that now, it's no where near as bad as it could be.

You cannot have an effective system if healthy people opt out of coverage, don't pay into the system and then want to buy into it once they get sick. It just won't work. That's why health insurance companies have pre-existing condition clauses. In theory, these exclusions make sense. After all, you can't buy storm insurance for your home when a Hurricane Warning has been issued for your area. I realize the awful reality is corporations using any angle they can to label something a "pre-existing condition" so they don't have to pay claims.

So, we have two options to get everyone access to coverage, regardless of financial sitaution. One is a single payer system in which we all pay higher taxes and all access is the same. Of course the insurance lobby is going to fight this tooth and nail because it is their very existence we are debating. There are enough people in this country who like feeling like they have a choice and believe the horror stories out of England and Canada, but forget the ones in their own country and they will take the side of the insurance companies on this. Or, we figure if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. We come up with a hodge podge of government funding and private companies. Of course, our taxes will go up anyway, but I'd like to think if government money was involved, there'd be more oversight of the insurance and medical providers.

But, in this system, everyone has to have coverage or the healthy will wait until they are sick to buy coverage and then plead poverty. Your taxes would go up the most in this type of scenario because only those with high medical bills have insurance.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

11. I'm 58

I work in a doctor's office. I file insurance, and frankly most insurance policies aren't worth the paper they are written on. Again and again and again I have insurance companies who refuse to pay for labs or office visits because some bean counter has decided it is not necessary. One of the biggest insurance companies refuses to pay for labs to confirm diagnosis for gluten intolerance (Celiac disease)--that same company won't put the address to file claims on their cards, and you have to jump through all kinds of hoops to find out even how to file.

My worry is that my "choice" will be to be forced to get coverage from this company or another one equally as lousy.

If the government is going to give insurance companies this bonanza of forced registration, then the government should require that the companies have their addresses to file on their cards and should pay for labs to confirm diagnosis.

[OregonBlue]

14. I do not believe the government should be able to FORCE me to buy any FOR PROFIT plan. I want a

government option. It really doesn't matter what they cover and what they do not as far as I'm concerned, it is the idea that my government would try to force me to buy private insurance that pays those millions of dollars salaries without offering me the right to buy into a much lower cost public plan whose administrators make normal government salaries. In fact, I do not believe they should be able to FORCE me to buy anything at all.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

15. I agree

The point is this--for profit plans will always put profits first, the needs of their clients second. They practice cookie cutter medicine, treating people not as individuals but as widgets that don't get care if they don't fall within certain parameters.

[redqueen]

4. The new plan isn't in place. Call today.

Details at the link in my sig.

[OregonBlue]

7. Already called Wyden, Merkley and Baucus. Agreed, make our voices heard!!!

[Coyote_Bandit]

5. Ummmm......

I have not seen a doctor for any reason in well over a decade and the fucking government makes me pay taxes that are used to provide health care to all sorts of other people - including people (using the term loosely here to refer to elected officials among others) who are far more capable of providing their own health care.

So now the government is going to force me to buy health insurance? Big fucking deal. I'll continue to carry that $10,000 deductible catastrophic medical coverage and my taxes will continue to be used to subsidize health care for still more people and I will likely still have to worry about whether or not the insurance company might raise my rates to some astronomical level or refuse coverage if I show precursors of certain conditions. Anybody that thinks this is an improvement is nuts.

Anything less than single payer is a complete crock of shit worthless "improvement" to our broken health care system. And the politicians do not have the political will to support single payer because it puts their corporate financed office and the power and prosperity it brings them personally at risk.

[OregonBlue]

6. I agree. However, if I'm reading it right, you won't be allowed to continue to carry that $10,000

deductible policy. Mine was a $17,000 deductible which I recently cancelled. You will be REQUIRED to buy the new "for everyone" plan. My point is, what if I refuse? I don't want to continue to buy insurance from a FOR PROFIT company that pays their CEO millions of dollars a year. If there is no PUBLIC OPTION, I won't buy at all. So will I now be a criminal?

[Coyote_Bandit]

9. Insurance companies

are not the only ones to blame for our fucked up health care system.

If I have $10,000 in assets to use toward meeting a deductible then I ought to be permitted to carry that deductible. ANd I note that I haven't heard any mention of changing the present rating structure or guaranteeing that coverage will not be cancelled.

If our government is unwilling to come up with some meaningful improvements to our health care system then I will give much more serious consideration to expatriating myself. I consider myself pretty much unemployable here. But I have a good education, skills, work experience and the resources to start my own little business. Access to capital does not particularly concern me. Access to health care does. Given that I just might be looking to start a business in another country - and I believe that there are some nations that would welcome my investment and encourage my efforts. The US? Apparently not. And that is their loss. I actually believe it may well be to my financial benefit to leave this country

[OregonBlue]

13. If you can afford it, by all means. Lots of wonderful countries out there.

[onenote]

8. You won't be put in jail...at least not at first

I don't know the details of the new health care plan, but as I understand the Massachusetts mandatory plan, if you didn't obtain health insurance, you lost a tax exemption in the first year and after that you were subject to penalties. I guess if you don't pay the penalties at some point you could face incarceration, just like you could face incarceration for not paying any other penalties or fines imposed by the government.

[OregonBlue]

12. I've already told Wyden I will fight him all the way to the Supreme Court if

necessary. They cannot require me to pay for health care executives to be paid millions of $$. Nor should I be fined if I don't want to participate in their health ponzi scheme that goes on enriching private FOR-PROFIT companies.

[Fumesucker]

16. Eventually, yes..

At first it will be financial penalties, if you do not pay the penalties then the eventual outcome will be jail. Resist going to jail strongly enough and you will be killed.

So, in a way you could say that the eventual penalty for not purchasing health insurance from a private entity could be death.