Advisors Quell Client Health-Care Fears

Nobody has explained how we can pay for this bill. The accounting makes Enron look honest. No private insurance company could book billions of premiums for long term care and not set aside one dime to actually pay claims. Nobody has explained how premiums won't skyrocket when you can buy insurance in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. Nobody has explained why employers won't just drop their insurance and pay the penalty, especially if they have lower paid employees, i.e. those who make under $88,000 per year, who will get their insurance subsidized by the government or get free care under Medicaid. Hatred of insurance companies and magically wanting healthcare to be less expensive doesn't make this bill work. As for the adviser who told the client it is a choice between doctors and insurance companies, explain how that works when the lowest payor is Medicaid and it is being expanded the most. That guy is not just ignorant, he is incompetent.

Perhaps I have been around too long. I well remember when Medicare was castigated as "socialism" and when anyone who supported racial integration was called a communist. If you want to see what real anger from conservatives looks like, go back to the letters to the editor when women were allowed to vote! The conservatives of that day appear to have been absolutely convinced that the end of the Republic was at hand. I have faced bankruptcy because I lost my job and needed to pay for critical healthcare for my young son. It took me many years to work off the $60,000 (much more in those years than today) and worse the terrible credit record I developed as a result of not being able to ante up two years' gross income immediately. My wife is a hospital chaplain. She sees working couples day in and day out who have had their savings exhausted, their IRAs drained and their future wrecked because they did not have and could not afford health insurance. In many cases they couldn't get it even if they could afford it because the issue they faced was a "pre-existing condition." I have ten employees, and I offer health insurance. Our costs have been rising at an astounding rate. Because of my connection to our health care system I was able to discover why. It is the critical emergency care that is given to the uninsured who have not been treated for years for things like diabetes. In our state we passed tort reform, and HMOs are well protected. Still health care costs skyrocket. My healh care professional clients are not seeing their pay go up, so where does the higher cost go? Our system is a non-profit, so it is not going to the shareholders. As an example, some of it goest to cover the amputation of a limb and treatment for an untreated diabetic construction worker. If you think that the bill is to provide unnecessary health care for layabouts, I recommend you volunteer your time to help in your local free clinic. When you see families lined up for blocks to get basic medical treatment and willing to stand for hours in the rain or cold or heat to get very basic care, you just might think you were in some poverty stricken third-world country. I have been one of them. If it is totalatarianism to provide basic health care to those who carry our our garbage, build our houses, and construct our highways, I guess I would vote for it. By the way, allowing women to vote was clearly unconstitutional. The Interstate Highway System was clearly unconstitutional. Social Security is and was quite clearly unconstitutiona. Medicare is clearly socialist. Which of those would you repeal?

Yes, it is sad indeed when hot button words like "totalitarianism" and "tyranny" are thrown about with abandon. You two may completely dislike this legislation, but it was passed by a majority of democratically (small d) elected Senators and Representatives. Making it, therefore, the exact opposite of totalitarianism and tyranny.

It's really sad to see that even some CFP's out there have so little to offer their clients on this subject. It's a big hairy bill, but it's not complex. Let me summarize: the massive multi-trillion dollar cost of this bill will be paid for by every american alive today and perhaps for the next several decades. In fact, most of the cost in the first 10 years is built on the assumption that $530 billion in cuts to the medicare program will in fact materialize. I doubt this will happen, ever.The rationale for this act of congress is built on the belief (false) that everyone has a right to really, really good health care. The average worker will be stunned to realize that the cost of this plan really is on his back in the form of less opportunity for a good job, smaller pay and benefits. Companies and business owners are crushed under the weight of massive additional taxes and regulatory hurdles in this bill. This will have a devasting impact on the little guy, just like a 20 year bout of high inflation would. It's completely assinine to suggest that we can cover 31 million additional americans with excellent medical care and benefits without significant pain (costs)at every economic level. This is not a partisan statement. I guess the planner from Richmond is still putting teeth under his pillow at night.....

Giving advice that this tyranny is to protect access to doctors? What happens when half the docs retire, or go into another business as so many have stated?Sounds like a liability to me.We can cut costs 30 to 50% every day, so this was not about costs.

Is this is what our profession has come to; a group of accomodating appeasers to big government who explain away every affront to justice and the Constitution by minimizing the effects of the most outrageous legislation in our history? At what point to we stand and speak the truth about totalitarianism?