| Sen. Bennet: Health care reform will help ease insurance costs
Health insurance premiums increased nearly 100 percent from 2000 to 2007, and wages increased slightly more than 20 percent, according to the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data. Bennet said during an editorial board meeting with The Daily Sentinel that he believes health-care-reform legislation will help ease the rising cost of Colorado health insurance. "If we stay with the status quo, what we know is that these double-digit increases will continue," Bennet said. Republican gubernatorial candidate Josh Penry said in an editorial in Friday’s Daily Sentinel that he believes the legislation will inspire many companies to drop the health-care coverage they provide in favor of the government’s plan, causing unwanted plan changes for some employees.
Plumbing, Discrimination, and Health Insurance Rates
Joyce Foster (D-Denver) asked insurance broker/insurance underwriters representative Jamie Scholl why women pay more than men for health insurance in the individual insurance market. His answer: "You'll have to ask God, because he put our parts on the outside and yours on the inside." Crude and laughable, but the rest of the insurance industry's reasoning basically follows the same appalling logic (and just for emphasis, he repeated his response in the afternoon session). Women are complicated and more health conscious, therefore more expensive. Men are simpler and less likely to see a doctor, therefore cheaper. Another health insurance lobbyist backed him up in the Denver Post, telling a reporter that women's health care is more expensive because their reproductive systems are more complex and require more complicated, costly and risky procedures.
State lawmakers face backlash over health benefits
Cafero is a state representative in Connecticut and taxpayers subsidize his generous health insurance plan, which requires only a $10 copay for any brand-name prescription drug. "I'm standing behind either an elderly person or a working-family person and they're taking out wads, like dropping 20, 40, 60 bucks. And I've got $10 — $5 for a generic," said Cafero, R-Norwalk. "I'm embarrassed." Pressure is mounting in states hit worst by the recession to take back some of lawmakers' generous health benefits that are funded by taxpayers. A review by The Associated Press showed lawmakers in 12 states get health insurance for free, while those in 28 states share the costs with taxpayers, often getting a better deal than private sector workers. In California, where finances are so bad the state has issued IOUs, the citizen commission that sets benefits for elective officials voted in June to reduce funds for lawmaker health insurance.
Like Your Health Insurance? Maybe You Shouldn't.
First, what does it mean to say that you are satisfied with your health insurance? Consider homeowner's insurance. Until you need it -- your house burns down -- you have no way of judging its quality. The same goes for health coverage; until you have a serious illness, the kind where your plan's limits and exclusions may kick in, how do you know if your health coverage is any good? For one thing, as the House Energy and Commerce Committee uncovered, some insurers go out of their way to revoke coverage for people with serious health problems by looking for mistakes on their original applications. For another, you could be underinsured, like 29 percent of all people with health insurance, according to Consumer Reports. It is politically relevant that two-thirds of Americans seem to like their health coverage, but whether they should like it is another question.
I Don't Have Health Insurance
I don't have health insurance. I have a job. I work 30 to 35 hours per week and I've had the job for almost two years now, but I don't get health insurance. I work at a hospital, as nursing aide, on the medical unit. My job is to look after patients who are disruptive and disoriented -- patients who are in the hospital for a stroke, or cancer, or pancreatitis or whatever, but they're having an especially hard time and they need extra attention -- that's what I do. I think it's a very hard job, certainly much harder than other jobs I've had. But I get no health insurance. You would think that a hospital would take an interest in the health problems of its staff. But if I get sick, well that's just my own problem. The hospital will just send me home without pay until I get better.
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