Whole Foods CEO vs. Obama's health insurance reform

I guess we need massages, chiropractors, and aromatherapy covered as well

My Chiropractor is already covered under insurance.

But, I get the point.

In many aspects Obama's propasal is nothing more than a shell game. He talks of ending current subsidies to insurance companies to ensure everyone. The problem is that the current subsidies are what enables the Aetna's and Humana's Medicare replacement plans to offer better covrage than traditional Medicare. So, remove the "subsidies" and seniors will experience higher Medicare premiums and costshare in an effort to insure the "poor".

If you are a kid or an adult with some sort of disability, I will happily pay higher taxes to ensure your medical care.

Though, for the others who "choose" to not have healthcare, I honestly dont care about the 27 year old who sits home all day playing Playstation instead of working.

Did anybody else tonight watch the CNN clip of the guy from his apartment complaining that he can't afford health insurance while the 47 to 50 inch plasma was hanging from his wall?

That's what I have a problem with. If you are disabled and CAN'T take care of yourself, I have no problem helping out. However, if you're just too lazy to get up off your ass and get a job, why should I fund your lifestyle? I have to work 9 hours a day. Why shouldn't you? If you're physically capable of working, you should be contributing to society.

I was grocery shopping last week and saw something that just burned my ass. Some woman was standing at the checkout line with her day old, marked down items, pulled her $300 Prada wallet out of her $1200 Louis Vuitton purse, and pulled out food stamps to pay for her food. I only had one item, so I left right behind her, and I saw her hop into her brand new Cadillac Escalade. My jaw hit the ground. I was stunned. My husband and I make over $100,000 a year, and I drive a 2000 Ford Explorer. He drives a 2002 Nissan Altima. These are some of the people whose health care we are going to be paying for. They can't afford health insurance, but they can damn sure afford $1200 purses and $60,000 cars. Ridiculous. Priorities, Priorities.

My belief is that, as long as health insurance exists as it does now, preventative care should be covered. Why? Because it is far less expensive to cover procedures and medications that prevent health issues than to cover the resulting issues. Example: For years birth control was not covered under most prescription plans (most do cover now), but pregnancy was covered. If the average birth control pill cost $20 per month ($240 per year) and the average pregnancy costs $15,000 start to finish, it would take 62.5 years to average out. (My daughter's last hospital bill from a normal, smooth vaginal delivery was over $13,000; I added extra to cover doctor's visits, etc)
If individuals could get checked up and checked out for a resonable cost, more people would have serious issues discovered earlier. If a colonoscopy detected cancer in a person, would the cost of that procedure and the early treatment be more cost effective to an insurance carrier than radical treatments and months in the hospital with a more than likely losing battle for an end stage disease?
I dunno, but I spent 15 years selling group health insurance. The industry definitely needs a major overhaul. As is, it's AWFUL!!!

I just got to say, I'm shocked that a forum with so many restaurant and former restaurant workers isn't more sympathetic toward the working poor.

I went 12 years without health insurance--only going to the doctor if a major illness required it, and it was always catastrophic to my budget when I had to. 12 years with NO dental visits, NO routine pap smears, NO new eye glasses, No anything! Now that I have health coverage and can afford to use it, I'm taking care of issues that would have been minor if I could have resolved them years ago.

The other day, a working friend was just talking about how she is saving $1,500 to have a tumor removed and a biopsy. This ain't Christmas presents she's saving for, its a damn TUMOR!

She has insurance.

I'm glad for those of you that never had to live this way. It sucks.

Edited to add that in those 12 years I sometimes had health coverage available to me, but I was living hand to mouth and simply could not afford the premiums or deductibles.

Universal coverage is not the same thing as nationalized health care.

I have been fortunate to be relatively healthy and insured my entire life. If I have to pay some additional $$$ to provide insurance for Mr. Big Screen and the Prada toting lady mentioned earlier in this thread, I'd gladly do it, provided that at least a few of the truly needy and/or uninsurable people get some reasonable level of coverage. Maybe it was the way I was brought up. We were poor, but were always taught to feel compassion and help those less fortunate.
Bill

I'm just wondering whatever happened to personal responsibility? If people would just take care of themselves, health care wouldn't be an issue.

How about fixing the system to weed out the people abusing it? I don't mind at all helping people who need it, but I don't think it's my responsibility to pay for someone to sit on their ass at home, while I'm working 9 hours a day to fund their lifestyle. Oh, and I get to pay for their health care too? Sounds GREAT! Where do I sign up? If someone truly cannot work, or is working, but can't afford insurance, I'm all for helping out, but if you're not even trying? Come on! I have no sympathy for you.

I deleted this post after more thought.

I'm just wondering whatever happened to personal responsibility? If people would just take care of themselves, health care wouldn't be an issue.

Yeah, I cant believe that my own mother was so irresponsible that she got cancer.
WTF

Because that's exactly what I meant.

If people would eat better, and get up off their butts and exercise instead of sitting in front of the tv all day, a good portion of costs could be controlled. Obesity goes down, thus lowering costs, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, etc is lessened, diabetes is lessened, thus lowering costs, allowing costs to come down for catastrophic diseases, such as cancer.

I have been fortunate to be relatively healthy and insured my entire life. If I have to pay some additional $$$ to provide insurance for Mr. Big Screen and the Prada toting lady mentioned earlier in this thread, I'd gladly do it, provided that at least a few of the truly needy and/or uninsurable people get some reasonable level of coverage. Maybe it was the way I was brought up. We were poor, but were always taught to feel compassion and help those less fortunate.
Bill

Best response I've read so far...and pretty much mirrors my life experience and attitude about this mess.

Ya know, I've always felt that if you could somehow disenfranchise the 10% of the people on the extreme political "right" along with the 10% of the people on the extreme political "left" that the other 80% of us could get along just fine. This health care thing is no different. The two sides seem to be debating two extremes...Do nothing or do everything. As with many things in this world the "truth" probably lies somewhere in the middle.

deleted by me.

I said nothing about eating better preventing cancer. I said it would prevent diseases related to obesity.

Medicare is almost bankrupt, Medicaid is almost bankrupt, the Postal Service is almost bankrupt, and it turns out Social Security is coming to a crisis within 5 years. The Federal Government can't pay for these things even when it is borrowing at a rate of $2 trillion dollars per year. Doubling down on government bureaucracies right now is crazy.

Let's see if some sanity can be applied to all the existing programs and then maybe we can talk about how the Feds can run the whole health care system better than the private sector. The track record isn't good.

The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.

That day has already arrived.

We can talk about the inefficiency of the Federal Government all we want, but the current US Health Care Systems is the most inefficient care delivery system around and is simply not sustainable. Consider, the US spends over 15% of its economy (GDP) on health related care. This is almost twice the average % of GDP for other developed countries such as Japan, S. Korea, France, Sweden, etc., yet the outcomes here are not measurably better than that experienced in these other nations. The inflation rate for health care is twice that of the whole economy, and has been since 1970.
I wish I was smart enough to figure out the solution, but I'm convinced that doing nothing is not a viable alternative to meaningful health care reform.
Bill

I have been fortunate to be relatively healthy and insured my entire life. If I have to pay some additional $$$ to provide insurance for Mr. Big Screen and the Prada toting lady mentioned earlier in this thread, I'd gladly do it, provided that at least a few of the truly needy and/or uninsurable people get some reasonable level of coverage. Maybe it was the way I was brought up. We were poor, but were always taught to feel compassion and help those less fortunate.
Bill

Best response I've read so far...and pretty much mirrors my life experience and attitude about this mess.

Ya know, I've always felt that if you could somehow disenfranchise the 10% of the people on the extreme political "right" along with the 10% of the people on the extreme political "left" that the other 80% of us could get along just fine. This health care thing is no different. The two sides seem to be debating two extremes...Do nothing or do everything. As with many things in this world the "truth" probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Thank you gentlemen for your calm and thoughtful natures.