Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill
Published: December 22nd, 2009
From FDL
Top 10 Reasons to Kill Senate Health Care Bill
- Forces you to pay up to 8% of your income to private insurance corporations — whether you want to or not.
- If you refuse to buy the insurance, you’ll have to pay penalties of up to 2% of your annual income to the IRS.
- Many will be forced to buy poor-quality insurance they can’t afford to use, with $11,900 in annual out-of-pocket expenses over and above their annual premiums.
- Massive restriction on a woman’s right to choose, designed to trigger a challenge to Roe v. Wade in the Supreme Court.
- Paid for by taxes on the middle class insurance plan you have right now through your employer, causing them to cut back benefits and increase co-pays.
- Many of the taxes to pay for the bill start now, but most Americans won’t see any benefits — like an end to discrimination against those with preexisting conditions — until 2014 when the program begins.
- Allows insurance companies to charge people who are older 300% more than others.
- Grants monopolies to drug companies that will keep generic versions of expensive biotech drugs from ever coming to market.
- No re-importation of prescription drugs, which would save consumers $100 billion over 10 years.
- The cost of medical care will continue to rise, and insurance premiums for a family of four will rise an average of $1,000 a year — meaning in 10 years, your family’s insurance premium will be $10,000 more annually than it is right now.
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December 22nd, 2009 at 3:22 pm
The flaw in your argument number 1 is that people should be able to ‘opt out’ of health insurance. It is a fact at 100% of U.S. citizens will, at some point in their lives, need healthcare. Currently, the arrogant minority that refuses to buy insurance are covered by the rest of us. They go to the emergency room when they break a leg. They go bankrupt, the go on Medicaid when they get cancer. And we, the paying majority, must pick up their tab.
While I don’t trust ‘for pay’ health insurance companies, who have a clear conflict of interest in providing healthcare to their customers (it reduces their profit), the first step to fixing the system is to accept the reality that, to paraphrase Tyler Durden, “on a long enough timeline, the I-don’t-need-health-insurance rate drops to zero.”