Sunday, August 02, 2009

Healthcare made easy

LAT takes a look at the government subsidized health insurance of Congress and other federal employees.
Among the advantages: a choice of 10 healthcare plans that provide access to a national network of doctors, as well as several HMOs that serve each member's home state. By contrast, 85% of private companies offering health coverage provide their employees one type of plan -- take it or leave it.

In all, taxpayers spent about $15 billion last year to insure 8.5 million federal workers and their dependents, including postal service employees, according to the Office of Personnel Management.
Steve Benen adds:
Rep. Steve Kagen, a Wisconsin Democrat who worked as a Green Bay-area physician for decades, is the only member of Congress who refuses to accept federal healthcare benefits, insisting that it's not fair for lawmakers to have a better option that his constituents. Instead, he goes without.

"If every member of Congress put their heads on their pillow every night like I do ... knowing this could be the night I lose my house, we'd fix healthcare in a week," said Kagen.
And Avedon posts one of the best explanations of reform I've seen. Read it all but here's the money quote.
So the mythology that there is a lot of choice that consumers have now is just that, it's mythology. Under single payer plan the way that it would be structured is that you pay a payroll tax, then you choose a doctor, you go to the doctor, and from your payroll taxes, or the taxes you pay in other ways, they reimburse the doctor.That's it.
So simple. If the media was posting explanations like this, instead of promoting GOP talking points, we would have a decent health care system in this country by now.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News]

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5 Comments:

Blogger Joe "Truth 101" Kelly said...

I hope you buddy at Avodon has better luck than I do advocating single payer Libby. It is intersting though seeing how many different variations of "socialist" I've been called because of this for two years.

9:25:00 PM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

I've been called socialist and worse Truth. Best policy is to ignore the trolls.

12:09:00 AM  
Blogger Ruth said...

The original church practiced sharing of wealth, a.k.a. communism - as the perfection of the teachings of that Christ the wingnuts say they follow. Funny how they change their minds when it comes to reality, and practice legalized theft instead.

9:11:00 AM  
Blogger Capt. Fogg said...

It's about time someone (other than me) mentioned that Jesus was a communist and that socialism was considered the ideal Christian life until fairly recently. In fact the guy who wrote our Pledge of Allegiance was a Christian Socialist.

But of course what passes for Christianity in America today is fairly antithetical to anything we can confidently say about Jesus' teachings.

Merging "screw you" Capitalism with Christianity was the most drastic revision since Constantine merged it with the 4th century Roman cults. Jesus would surely weep.

9:48:00 AM  
Blogger Libby Spencer said...

I've yet to meet a real Christian in a church.

7:19:00 PM  

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