With the skirmish on healthcare reform still raging in Washington, another voice from New York offers support for the working class. Our Junior Senator, Kirsten Gillibrand has joined 29 other Democratic senators in insisting that legislation to overhaul the nation’s health care system includes a government-run “public option” for medical insurance. The Senate Finance Committee is set to vote on a health care overhaul package in two days. Gillibrand and the others made their views known to Harry Reid in hopes to persuade the outcome in the last minute.
The public option would suppress costs by increasing competition with private insurers. Opponents say the Public option would create an unfair competitive advantage over the private insurance firms. You know, they need the 3% increase in profits annually or their stockholders may spark a wholesale in stock sales.
In one Westchester paper, Gillibrand said: “We cannot have a system in which the only choice is private plans. Everyone should have the option of buying into a not-for-profit public plan at a rate that they can afford.”
Who among us doesn't know just how few options there are in the insurance market? Many states are dominated by a just a handful of for-profit health insurers with the suits deciding who gets the services they need.
Those of us without any health insurance are merely coasting toward the inevitable crisis that will wipe out all of our savings and bring us to bankruptcy. Having an affordable option, which scares the bejesus out of the Insurance Company supporters, would provide enough of us with the security to raise a family without the fear of losing our homes.
The letter to Reid is posted on a few News sites. You can find it easily, but let me include the piece that's going around the twitter world: “It is possible to create a public health insurance option that is modeled after private insurance — rates are negotiated and providers are not required to participate in the plan. The public plan would report to taxpayers, not to shareholders, and the public plan would be available continuously in all parts of the country.”
What many people are asking is where is Schumer on this? Why isn't his signature on the letter and when will he join the chorus of consumer advocates, health officials and economists who share this desire for public affordable healthcare?
9 comments:
More than two thirds of the American people want a single payer health care system. And if they cant have a single payer system, 77% of all Americans want a strong government-run "public option" on day one! (86% of democrats, 75% of independents, and 72% republicans). Basically everyone.
Where is the leadership?
At the most vulnerable times of your lives (when you were sick and hurting), millions of Americans have had to fight and loose cruel, but heroic battles. Fighting against the big guns of the DISGRACEFUL, GREED DRIVEN, PRIVATE FOR-PROFIT MEDICAL INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX! All because you have no place else to go. You have no other CHOICE!
Thank you Kirsten.
It is soooo easy to blame the people you send your checks to. If we paid the doctors directly, you'd all be screaming about how we need publicly funded doctors. Fact is, payments to providers and drug companies have been sky rocketing. Insurance companies might have up to (tops) 15% administrative costs. Does ANYONE thing government administrative costs will be any better? You will have 100% union with any government program, not to knock union work, but they are generally more expensive.
An area health insurance company, has been running in the red for years. No stockholders have been getting rich. This company is DROPPING government programs for Upstate counties, which account for 80% of its business. Why? Because the difference between what the provider will accept as payment, and what Medicaid covers, is too great. If this LOCAL company does not find new business, 100+ Ulster County residents will be out of work in a year, taking away MORE resources from you, the tax payer. Watch the papers.
HOW many people do you want to put out of work, how many sacrifices of the 'few' for the greater of the whole is justifiable. No State in the US, has a proven government program that is solvent. No COUNTRY has been able to maintain costs, without raising taxes through the roof, or rationing HC.
Nothing is free. Everything comes at a cost.
i waited 8 years for a Liver Transplant & i am now 4 years post transplant & if this system was in place & the rest of that disgraceful president's "plan" for Health care,, i would be DEAD now. yes, DEAD !!!
my private health plan took care of me & i had many levels of needs,,
EIGHT YEARS i was sick & dying & was as close to death @ the end as anyone ever was,, but now i am living & happy & healthy thanks to good old USA medical teams, Dr BUCH in kingston & Mount Sinai Hospital. a winning combination,, oh yes, with FAITH & G-D's hand too.
say no to obama's "health plan" sorry but our medical system needs fine tuning not Socialistic makeovers & Government takeovers,
I KNOW !!!
I'm with you Living Miracle. At 39, I was diagnosed END STAGE Hodgkins in 2007. My chemo started 3 DAYS! after diagnosis. The insurance company, by LAW, has up to 30 days to approve chemo-therapy treatment. They approved my treatment after ONE PHONE CALL on the day of diagnosis. It took them another day to get their hands on ABVD.
I was suffering from a pulmonary effusion and a cardiac tamponade due the disease. In the ER, the Cardiologist (Christiana) could not believe I was still walking and talking. Without immediate treatment, they thought I had less than 2 weeks. Without immediate action, less than a few days. They immediately cut me open (conscious sedation) to relieve the fluid in my chest.
If I lived in Canada or the UK, I wouldn't be here, a thorn in the side of progressives.
9:56 we are brothers in Life,,,
G-d's Blessings on you & yr loved ones,,
Serious illnesses take the toll on our Families the most,, we are too busy dying, then living, to realise this, but now,, after 4 yrs of LIFE,, i thank my Family & Friends for helping me get thru this hard road,, you too, i bet !!
Enjoy EVERY SANDWICH !!
First, give thanks to those who actually had something to do with your recovery; your doctors & staff. Not some imaginary being.
Say the impossible happens and we get health care choice, you get the same care as the guy in the next bed with the same doctor. But you get a premium bill that buries your family financially for decades. Are you going to complain to the same imGinary being or yourself for chiding the private profit driven policy?
The evil ObamaCare that you are all afraid of doesn't deny your right to keep your profit driven policy. It merely offers an affordable plan to the rest of us.
Wow 11:42, it must be a cold realization in your house, believing there is nothing after death. Do you have children? Do you tell them after grandma dies, "Sorry, you will never EVER see her again." and "No Johnny, when you die, it's OVER. You're body rots away, and there is NOTHING for you after this life.".
Just because YOU don't believe in a higher being, one that gives HOPE to people, doesn't make those who do believe any less. In fact, a person, like yourself, who has OBVIOUSLY evolved into a higher place than us 'believers', should be more 'inclusive', should have a higher level of 'openness' to 'diversity' and 'customs'. After all, it's the 'natural' direction.
Sen. Kissme Jigglyboobs is at it again. The Guns n' Roses addict("guns against immigrants, roses for everyone else")has nothing to say as usual about anyone who does hard work such as immigrants who restored the Kirkland Hotel in Kingston and what they might have any need for in terms of health care. Foo on her standard political baloney-piss and the largest church in the world she sponsors for her "Jigglyboobery."
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