No problem, I am sure all you guys that are promoting pay as you go healthcare have $100,000 in cash that you are willing to spend in a year or two if you get seriously ill -- right or wrong, that is what it may cost you.

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Originally Posted by Squirtit California PCIP insurance , just transferred to Federal PCIP this month (Obama Care). Above data is for the new Federal PCIP I pay.

I have the same insurance but the premium is $427 a month ( age related no doubt). Same situation the State PCIP grant was not refunded.

I was uninsurable at any price before the "Obamacare" -- I am probably alive today, or not an invalid, and still a taxpayer (since 1970) because of it.

That is an unsubsidised price BTW and may be indicative of the new pricing requirements of "Obamacare"

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Originally Posted by Eschaton There was a time when health care was actually affordable, when most costs were paid out of pocket. That was long ago when the Government was never involved and before medicare/medicaid started distorting everything.

I remember it as a child -- people were bankrupted when they got sick and then they died. The average live expectancy of Americans has increased 10 years since 1960 just before the time when Medicare was enacted. So by distorted you mean we spend too much keeping people alive?

I guess that extra 10 years is too expensive for you -- remember what you said today on your death bed and tell them to pull your plug.

The are other industrialized countries that the average citizen lives 5 to 10 years longer than Americans do. Apart from our fast-food eating habits contributing to this -- every one of those countries has some form of universal health care.

Universal access to preventative medicine saves lives, and more importantly, can preserve the quality of life.

Really, most of us would be better off paying a 6% to 10% tax for universal heath care, full access without deductibles, and stop relying on for-profit insurance benefits that we pay directly for or our employers offer as a benefit ( that we really pay for with lower salaries. Businesses and their employees realize a tax free pass through of most employer paid health benefits -- what the stink really is about is the 40% tax on "Cadillac Plan" health benefits that corporate executives have had to pay since 2011 -- enter the Koch Brothers and their wannabes ... don't drink the Kool Aid! Their arguments are self-centered horeshit.

Social Security and Medicare has changed America -- in 1935 when the Social Security Act was passed people made the same sort of arguments but the fact is that the average life expectancy in America in 1935 was about 60 years today is near 79 years live expectancy today.

My mother turned 91 last month she is collecting on the long-term care insurance that she has paid $250,000+ in premiums on for over 35+ years for long-term home care now -- the cost of home care, and in the worst case a nursing home will eat that premium expenditure up in a 3 years maybe. Most people end up old and dying is some bad situation bankrupt on Medicaid supplemental assistance to Medicare after the use all their assets paying for care then they qualify for benefits that are little more that warehousing dying people.

Maybe, they should just voluntarily go out to the woods woth a blanket and no food to die like the Native Americans did ( at 45 usually )? That is not how our modern society works. I can't just hand my mother a blanket and point to the path to the woods.

But don't worry, the Koch Brothers will go out in grand style while all their mouthpieces die early deaths. They don't give a shit -- they have the money to pay for the best in life and for top-end end-life care.

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Originally Posted by sperbonzo Sorry, but that isn't really accurate. Actually, the vast majority of people had insurance, either through their employer, (which started during WWII as a way to attract people to a job, since there were wage and price controls), or privately. The huge difference between then and now, is that states did not mandate what the insurance carriers had to cover, so people generally just got insurance plans for the catastrophic things, and paid cash for the rest..... which meant that they shopped around, and this kept prices way down. .

Insurance, in many cases paid by large companies, as part of their Union contracts was how the general population became familiar with health insurance. As a consequence, smaller businesses offered it to be competitive with large firms.

I remember when my father changed jobs, he was a tool and die maker, machine builder, and pattern and mold maker -- the new shop was larger and offered benefits. Health insurance was uncommon before Union Contracts with negotiated benefits -- that occurred in the early 1960s for most workers. You are quoting the exception rather than the rule. (Off the talking points list?)

I remember as a child my parents sitting at the family dinning table lamenting over how to pay the doctor bills for me and my sister we were 7 and 4 respectively. The doctor's office gave you a statement and you paid on the never ending balance -- that was life in the early 1960s and it wasn't all Ozzie and Harriet or Father Knows Best let me assure you -- I lived it as a child.