Millions of Jobless Lose Insurance Aid
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
The changes that the health-care bills in Congress envision are years away — not soon enough to help the millions of unemployed people who, on Monday, lost their temporary federal subsidies for health insurance.That means that people like Linda Rasor, 56, who lives in Haslett, near East Lansing, Mich., and was laid off from her energy consulting job in February, will have to start paying triple the cost for their health insurance.
As losses rippled out from Michigan’s devastated auto industry, Ms. Rasor was laid off from Johnson Controls Inc. With the federal subsidy, she has been paying $407 a month to cover herself, her husband, who is an independent contractor, and her daughter, who is in college. But with the subsidy now gone, her premiums will jump to $1,100 a month.
The rest of the New York Times article…
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This Times article is further proof of the complete inadequacy of health insurance through employment. Lose your job, lose your health care access. That only makes sense if you believe that only those who are profitable to the corporations deserve health care. Is that what the United States of America is about?
Why is the government willing to subsidize premiums (temporarily) but paying for our health care directly through Medicare For All is “off the table” ? Those of you who voted for Obama and the Democrats in ‘08—I voted for McKinney—are seeing more people lose their health insurance because they lost their job in the worst economy since the Great Depression the change you voted for?
Health care is our birthright. We don’t have to earn it or deserve it. It is something that every human being needs at one time or another because it is the nature of the human body to get sick and injured. It is also the nature of life to seek its own continuance, therefore, living beings tend to seek out opportunities to cure or repair illness or injury unless the situation is perceived to be terminal. It is only the human being who puts the artificial barrier of money in the way of this natural pursuit of all species, and only human beings of a certain political and economic bent at that.
It would be interesting to know how many of those people of a certain political and economic bent have ever suffered a serious illness or injury (or their loved ones did), and had the bills wipe them out financially. If you know anyone like that who still believes that single payer, universal heath care means that those who work will have their earnings confiscated to support non-workers, yada, yada, yada, would you please direct my attention to them? I really would like to know what makes such a person tick.
Health care for all, regardless of whether or where we work! NOW! Not years from now! NOW! Paid for from our taxes, (as long as we have got this fool system of paying for things), which would not have to be raised if we didn’t waste blood and treasure on WAR!
That’s what it really comes down to. We can spend money on health or we can spend money on death and destruction. Hey, all you right-wing anti-abortion types, how come a lot of you are also pro-war? How come you are entitled to not see Federal money pay for what you call murder while the rest of us see our money thrown away on what we call murder?
At least an argument can be made for abortion in cases of rape, incest and to spare the life of the mother. Also, in cases where the fetus is so deformed it will not live long anyway (such as when the fetus’ brain does not develop beyond the reptilian brain stem that controls the autonomic nervous system). One can argue, at least in the first trimester, that a woman has a right to self determination over her body that trumps the right of a not-yet-viable unborn embryo or fetus to continue.
BUT THERE IS NO ARGUMENT FOR WAR IN IRAQ, AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, OR IRAN! There is no argument for war, period. It is high time that the human race learned to do without it. And we would do without it if we turned our attention to curing the sick and feeding the hungry, and recognizing everyone’s equality before the law.
No, I’m not going off on a tangent. Why do we make such a political issue over the cost of single-payer universal health care or even that “Greater Health Insurance Industry Profits Act” which is being cooked up in Congress, while not having any serious debate on the Hill about the cost of war?
Think about that as people like Linda Rasor scramble to find health care while President Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan.
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