Health Care for Idiots and Democrats

Enslavement by Health Insurance

by Richard Amerling, MD

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“You load sixteen tons, what do you get,
another day older and deeper in debt,
Saint Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go,
I owe my soul to the company store”

—-“Sixteen Tons”    Merle Travis

Song

According to Wikipedia, the “company store” in this classic country song refers to the “truck system” where employees are paid in substitute currency, known as “scrip.”  This limits employees’ ability to choose how to spend earnings, generally to the benefit of the employer.  In closed economic systems, such as existed in various mining towns, workers had little choice but to buy from the company store, which often led to significant indebtedness, limiting their ability to leave the system.  This created a form of indentured servitude, prompting legislation that made payment in other than legal tender illegal.  

During World War II, the government imposed wage and price controls.  In an effort to attract and retain workers, companies offered health insurance in lieu of wages.  These benefits were not taxable for either the employer or employee.  When the war ended and controls lifted (everywhere except in New York City, where rent controls persist to this day), the tax subsidy for employer-sponsored health insurance was retained.   This explains why the majority of working Americans buy health insurance at work, at the “company store.”  This accident of history underlies much of what has gone wrong with health care in America.  

Since insurance is “in kind” payment in lieu of wages, it sustains the illusion that “someone other than you” is paying for your medical care and creates an incentive to use the benefits.  Along with low-deductible, “first dollar” coverage, this clearly led to overutilization of health care services, which drove up both prices for services and insurance premiums.  Most people are unaware of how much their insurance costs.  It is probably between $10-20,000 per year.  This money would be added to your paycheck, taxable, if there was no insurance provided.  When your employer deducts money from your paycheck for premiums, what they are really doing is shifting wages into non-wage benefits.  Assuming you are healthy and don’t use much health care, this is a bad deal financially and leaves you poorer.  

Employers naturally want healthy and happy workers, but they have bottom line requirements that compel them to shop for inexpensive policies.  This created a market for health maintenance organizations (HMOs) with their gatekeepers and intensive micromanagement that doctors and patients find so distasteful.  Employers must limit options for their employees, who are stuck unless they change jobs or refuse to buy “company store insurance.”  In the latter case, they will pay in after-tax dollars for an outside insurance policy.   

Employees, or their families, with chronic health issues may be quite reluctant to leave a job with a health plan, particularly if they have relationships with hospitals and doctors in that plan.  There are undoubtedly millions of Americans who are trapped in jobs they no longer like simply because they are worried about the consequences of changing health plans, or going without.  These people have “sold their soul to the company store” and are, at least partially, enslaved. 

Imagine how transformed the landscape would be if individuals purchased their own health insurance (as we do for all other types of insurance).   As proposed by George W. Bush and others, this could be done immediately and painlessly by transferring the tax break on health insurance from the employer to the individual.   A competitive market for individual health insurance policies would spring up overnight.  The majority of consumers would likely prefer a high-deductible policy to cover against a significant illness, coupled with a Health Savings Account, from which routine care could be financed.  Groups could form to enhance purchasing power, and to cover those with significant pre-existing conditions.  

According to 2008 Census data, of 45.6 million uninsured, 32.1 million earned over $25,000 per year (including 9.1 million earning over $75,000).  Many of these people chose not to buy health insurance, seeing it as the bad deal it is.  Many would likely buy a catastrophic policy were one available.  Far from being unable to get care, they can freely choose any physician they like and pay cash.   In many ways they enjoy more freedom than the 200 million covered by private insurance and the 87.4 million covered by government insurance.   Too bad we will all soon be enslaved under ObamaCare, and will “owe our soul” to the federal government.

Watch Dr. Amerling at Aug. 7 Doctors Tea Party

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 Richard Amerling, MD, is a nephrologist practicing in New York City.  He is an Associate Professor of at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and the Director of Outpatient Dialysis at the Beth Israel Medical Center.  Dr. Amerling studied medicine at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, graduating cum laude in 1981.  He completed a medical residency at the New York Hospital Queens and a nephrology fellowship at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.  He has written and lectured extensively on health care issues and is a Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. Dr. Amerling is the author of the Physicians’ Declaration of Independence (http://www.aapsonline.org/medicare/doi.htm).

The mechanism described above is well known in Europe and in Canada.  Here, the "Progressives" used the tax code to work closer to control, the dullard representatives went along with the idea as there was a party later in the evening. The new health insurance take over, mislabeled a "health care bill," just takes control of the mechanism put in place that keeps employees as indentured serfs. 

Another "TRUST" destroyed by Congress: Medicare

First, from Bob (I give up trying to work this embed thing) 


http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=G44NCvNDLfc


This is the second time I have watched the representative.  He is my choice for the next president, the old guard being of no value. He knows what he is saying and can form coherent thoughts; I wonder if his associates understand what he is saying?  


---------


I have an advantage over most, I got sick early. I got mine; that fits with the new America. Good luck to you.


 Below, you can see why Obama wants to kill off older people. Now, it all makes sense.


Note that defense spending is now less than Medicare.


When I started studying the end of America as a student, the Social Security Trust Fund actually existed.  It was a trust that the government set up to help the people, though it had its socialistic element of forced contribution.  


This projection puts a recent comment by one of those Democratic talking heads. The logic being used was we had to have a socialized plan because it is too expensive (TO GOVERNMENT) the way we are going.  Tomorrow, I will publish a table showing private insurance makes very little return on income and some of the sectors are negative. This is what the government wants to improve. The eternal:   ???????  


Actually, it is not hard to figure out, if you read history. First, tyrants take control of medical care, then guns, then schools. Done. In our case, the medical care grab also involves a huge sack of money that the government does not have. You can bet it will absorb all that insurance money, spend it, then promise to pay medical care out of the general fund with the coming funny money. Except, Congress will not participate, of course, who I am sure will continue to use AIG.  


The Democratic Congress could not leave a pile of money alone, so it no longer exists. Gone. If I did that with a trust or escrow company, the politically correct thing to do is have me arrested, but I am not Congress.  


Since all these thieves are voted back in, we, the people, are responsible. You can't keep blaming the hacks, if they keep getting voted in.  You have to act or take part of the responsibility, as well as buy silver in a few weeks. 


A very young Prince Charles once said in an interview, I would say in the early 70's, something that bothered me, so I kept in mind, it went something like:  "The people get the government they deserve."


The Medicare Trust Fund, sent in by Irene:

Medicare Trust Fund

Source:  Office of the Actuary for Medicare. 

Hoven's Index for October 26, 2009

Medicare expenditures (% GDP) in 2008:  3.2%.

Projected for 2035:  7.3%.

Projected in 75 years:  11.4%.

Source:  Office of the Actuary for Medicare. 

Total Defense expenditures (% GDP) for the years 2004-2007:  4.0%.

British private medical insurance

Daumier, Human Weakness

Since we have lost control of medical care with this past election, regardless of the Constitutional restrictions on the Federal Government, you may be interested in a web site I located in England. It offers private insurance for those who want to have secure care.

BTW (Texting lingo) I was looking for a source of red yeast rice supplements, as my doctor suggested they work great and I need to get my cholesterol levels sub human (they are OK, but down we go). My friend Ruth is off the scale on the low end, so I will probe as to what she eats. She tells me every day she has a salad for lunch and navy beans on rice for dinner.(Too lazy to cook)

If you buy an extract in the U.S., you buy nothing as the FDA has had all the stuff in it that worked removed. Why?

The active substance is just like a patented, approved statin drug. Can't have people eating food without a prescription. They come at you from all sides, don't they?

I think I may just buy the rice and eat it, unless the food becomes regulated as a drug (like they want to do with Vitamin C). One could go to Alibaba and buy a drum of extract from China. Anyone want a few pounds? Maybe a trip to Canada.

Click on the title for the English site.

Saga Private Medical Insurance

Why do I need private medical insurance?

In a lifetime we spend literally thousands of pounds insuring our cars, our homes, our valuables and even our lives. Yet basic good health is perhaps the most precious asset we have, and all too often it is not given enough consideration.

The National Health Service is one of the best healthcare systems in the world for the treatment of accidents and emergencies. However, the sheer number of operations needed for less urgent conditions means that it continues to struggle to cope with the increasing demand on its resources. There are still a substantial number of people in the UK waiting for admission to hospital for treatment**. Private medical insurance enables you to avoid these lengthy delays.
**Source: Department of Health.

A range of policies

Saga has been providing private medical insurance for more than 18 years. In 2007, our survey showed that many people aged 50 and over would prefer to have private healthcare. With two product ranges Saga private medical insurance is more accessible and affordable for the over 50.

* Saga HealthPlans provide all the benefits of traditional private medical insurance through a choice of four policies.
* Saga Targeted Healthcare policies make health cover more affordable by concentrating on specific conditions that commonly affect people aged 50 and over.

etc

The plans cover what we would consider insurance. The mid-plan gets you stuff like an MRI, rather than wait for months, a self-regulating cost feature of central planning. Once a person dies, they really don't need the MRI.

Saga HealthPlan Secure is our mid–range policy as it limits the amount you can claim for out–patient treatment to £650 per year. However, in addition to providing full cover for MRI, CT, and PET scans it also includes £300 for physiotherapy and complementary therapies following related in–patient treatment. Saga HealthPlan Secure also includes cover for the provision of home nursing and a private ambulance.

So, the young want free health care and the older folks want to live. Me, I want to eat rice. How is it our politicians are so obtuse as to what it is they are talking about? All that matter, I guess, is the rabble votes for them. You won't hear about the failing of the Canadian and English systems as long as demagogues can be elected.

As individual freedom dies, individual cunning will expand, like every prior country in the world, like in the Europe we are told is so wonderful. Life will revolve around beating the tax man. Only now, the rich won't be able to move to America to protect their money.

In America, we used to have the only voluntary tax system. We trusted people to pay their taxes, as it was their government. People just reported their numbers and paid.

Sounds archaic, doesn't it. We now enter the long cycle of history of people suffering at the hands of the controlling central government and its unknowable tax code. It will be too late to wake one day and say, "You can't do that. It is unconstitutional." They tell me Texas was admitted to the union only with the proviso that is has the right to leave. Interesting, y'all.

Like the man said, the founding fathers gave us a republic, "if you can keep it." Once these new socialistic measures are in place, there is no removing them. The people have learned they can vote themselves other people's money. Of course, they are also stupid to think there is a free lunch or rice. I suppose it all comes down to education, or the lack of it. Or, should I say, a training in critical thinking. All along, those running the mess will keep on giving themselves money. What is the next Fannie Mae?

So, get peanut butter and buy land far from the coming glaciers and dictators, say Costa Rica. Work on how to not pay taxes, not be regulated, and not rely on the web of debt without getting arrested or shot. The Amish understand.













Introducing the Saga HealthPlan range





Saga HealthPlan Super




Saga Private Medical Healthcare



Saga HealthPlan Super is our ‘top of the range’ policy, which provides a very high level of protection for in–patient and day–patient cover and offers unlimited out–patient treatment including consultations, diagnostic tests, scans and physiotherapy. It also includes cover for home nursing, complementary therapies such as oesteopathy and homeopathy, an overseas evacuation or repatriation service, the use of a private ambulance and even assistance towards some major dental work.

...

(One of the plans)