In other words between 200-400% of poverty premiums would be assessed on a sliding scale basis. A single parent family would be 460$/month at 400% of poverty and above. At 400% of Poverty and above the maximum premium for a 2 parent family would be 670$/month. Given that current family coverage for EPDTA standards is approximately 1000/month this would net to a substantial savings for ALL plan participants. Whats not to love about this plan!
This program would suck big time for me and my family, It is about $600 a m onth more than I am paying now for great coverage. I earn more than 400% of the federal poverty line so i would be force to pay more to subsidize those than earn less. Thats called socialism. won't work. I could get a blue cross blue shield policy on my own for less than the 1000 a month
Oh, don't forget you'll pay that much more so you can also pay an additional 7.5% out of pocket expense. You forgot about that! :icon_roll
Specializes in Critical care, tele, Medical-Surgical.
RNS ON THE SINGLE PAYER ROAD BRING TRUTH, DIGNITY
By Donna Smith, community organizer
Gardnerville and Fallon, Nevada -- Whether we were in front of a busy WalMart center or in a small diner, the nurses on the road with the Nevada Nurses Organizing Committee were educating and listening to real people with real issues. Everywhere we went, people were open about the difficulties they confront every day in accessing and affording healthcare, and many only had limited information or misinformation about the healthcare reform plans being offered by the presidential candidates. ...
...I met 73 year old Bob Nelson at one of our diner stops. Bob started his career as a firefighter as a young teenager in 1949. After suffering a stroke and several other health problems, Bob finally retired a couple of years ago, after serving more than 50 years in a helping profession he loved. But now, becase he cannot afford all of his own meds, he is going back to work to earn enough money to stay on his prescribed treatments. Bob told me he will be teaching some emergency preparedness classes to newer firefighters. ...
This is EXACTLY the type of comprehensive health care plan that America needs,so lets hear what the nay sayers have to say about this, I'm sure there will be some.
Not a naysayer to genuine reform, however we need to keep our eye on the prize.
This is what Rose Ann DeMoro, Executive Director of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee, (also, an Executive Vice President of the AFL-CIO, which represents hundreds of thousands of single-payer advocates), had to say in a recent analysis of HCAN's proposal:
...in search of a supposedly politically viable plan, the advocates of this approach have surrendered in advance on the only overhaul that will actually cure the disease, a single-payer, expanded and improved Medicare for all reform.
Their good intentions will leave the same failed system in place, and will not even blunt the political opposition from those on the right and corporate interests who will continue to challenge anything that looks like even modest reform.
They create a false hope of systemic change that won't be, squandering the opportunity to achieve the fundamental reform so desperately needed with so many lives in the balance.
They've also missed one of the most important lessons of the failure of the Clinton plan of 1993-94 which collapsed in part due to the absence of a broad, grassroots, activist movement needed to counter the insurance industry. Only single payer engenders such a movement, the very reason the single payer bill now in Congress, HR 676, has more co-sponsors than any other reform bill with tens of thousands around the country already working to enact it.
Health Care for America Now has identified the main culprit and obstacle to genuine reform. As their inaugural ad proclaims, "Will health insurance companies ever put your health ahead of their profits? We can't trust insurance companies to fix the health care mess."
There's just one problem -- the coalition's proposal does nothing to end the actual practice of insurance companies putting their profits ahead of your health. Nor does it fix the two central components of the health care morass -- insurance company denials of care and the financial squeeze facing American families due to ever skyrocketing health care costs which is exacerbated by the escalating credit crisis.
What a lot of folks don't understand is that many who do not have healthcare go without insurance because they cannot afford or simply do not want to paythe premiums. Even $120 for most single parent households at 200% of the Pov Level is a lot of money. Many uninsured have access to health insurance, but opt out because they have other uses for the money. I don't know how happy these folks will be if coverage is mandated...
But when they get sick enough to end up in the ER we will pay for their health care through cost shifting of the uncollectable expenses to the insured through increased premiums.
Medic2RN, BSN, RN, EMT-P
1,576 Posts
Oh, don't forget you'll pay that much more so you can also pay an additional 7.5% out of pocket expense. You forgot about that! :icon_roll