HEALTH CARE BILL

(Just a disclosure: In order to protect my Mother, I have intentionally omitted the stocks that she still holds in some of the financial institutions that were covered previously without mentioning any names.)

Now with this Health Care debate going on, I am confused (I acknowledge that I have not read any of the bills working its way through Congress). Why doesn’t the White House come out with its statistics and information with how much this Health Care Insurance bill will cost without being seen as partisan and how are they going to pay for it honestly.

It seems that without sufficient knowledge people are being led to believe wrong assumptions about what will happen to their insurances or not if the bill passes. It seems that the Conservatives or whatever you call them are winning this seemingly elusive debate. There is no middle ground being debated in this Bill.

I am not for the public option (although it would be just fine as I have insurance through my spouse’s plan ) but if you can just overhaul the system there is no need for the bill to cost so much over the ten year period (last time I checked it was $900.00 Billion).

Just by reading the stories on the internet and other places, even families who have excellent coverage can be sent overboard (i.e. crushing debt) by a sudden emergency or some precondition that they thought would not effect their coverage.

Just my recommendations, if they can mandate a law regarding forbidding the preexisting condition on insurance policies maybe as far back as 10 or 20 years, many people will eventually be covered.

COBRA sucks here. I was offered COBRA when I was laid off but it cost me more than the premiums if I go out on my own alone. Why do they make it seems like COBRA is the next best thing after your health. Since COBRA continues with your previous employees for 18 Months, the unemployed person already without a job has to pay a regular premium plus administrative fees. How is that fair or better?

Again if it is the preexisting conditions that make people stay with it. We should forbid the preexisting conditions lasting as far back as 10 to 20 years.

Although the public option will be a good idea only as far as for people who lose their jobs or poor people. It should be only available (like Medicaid) with certain income threshold.

One thing is to make the public option available to people who lose their jobs so that once they are out of work this option (insurance )can continue to until they get another job so that they don’t have to worry about their insurance and food on the table.

The poor or low income people can continue to have this public option available to them under strict income guidelines so that it should not be abused as it is now with Medicaid.

One of the requirements in one of the bills is to penalize the people who will not buy insurance. WHY? How will they be able to get the coverage when the insurance is so expensive? Again the Public option comes into play like I mentioned above.

Small Business owners (irrespective of number of people employed) should be offered this public option also without mandatory requirements.

This public option can be offered with premiums based on some formula of previous year’s revenue. And if it is new small business then for a small premium they can decide to join in or opt out.

Now comes the hard part, How to pay for all this. One this is for sure, the premiums are not going to go down if the public option is not there.

One of the ways to pay (which will be highly unpopular) will be to force higher income recipients of Medicare to pay more for their premiums.

Another one is the more businesses join in the public option plan the more premium revenue the Government can generate and reduce the costs of the Health care Bill.