Does this bill help or hurt the poor?

[begin_within]

I sent e-mail to a friend today urging him to sign an online petition against the bill, and he sent back:

"i support it, Bob
i see it as a way for folks who have nothing to at least have something"

From my point of view, forcing someone to buy something can't be considered helping them. What do you think?

[bigwillq]

1. We will find out when it gets passed and implemented

I hope it helps. We shall see.

[sandnsea]

2. It expands Medicaid and provides subsidies

Why do people want to distort this?

[begin_within]

4. How is it a distortion to say that it forces someone to buy something?

[DJ13]

6. Not everyone "poor" qualifies for Medicaid

[sandnsea]

17. This bill changes that, that's the point of new legislation

To change things that are wrong with the current system. No kidding adults can't qualify for Medicaid now. That's why they added the change in the legislation.

[lapfog_1]

3. Helps the poor, hurts the middle class, doesnt affect the rich. - n/t

[Hello_Kitty]

7. Bingo. It's a transfer of wealth from the middle class to the wealthy. eom

[rwheeler31]

5. It will help many poor people,especially with more clinics;

and primary health care doctors.

[eilen]

8. Primary health doctors don't just pop up with the dandelions every

Spring. I think there will be a large number of PA's and NP's carrying the patient load with maybe one or two MD's to sign off on them.

[mdmc]

9. for the unemployed poor a good thing

for the working poor a bad thing. but I guess it depends on how you decide "poor".

[TwilightGardener]

11. What do the working poor get now?

[begin_within]

13. Well, for example,

me, a self-employed individual who has been hit hard by the recession, it looks like this year I have paid 25% of my net income towards my health insurance premium. And that's for bare-bones health insurance ($2900 deductible, copayments for everything, 40% copayment for hospital, only generic drugs). I was really looking forward to a public option, and I don't see how I benefit at all from the current bill. My answer to your question would be that the working poor get nothing. But I'm more concerned about people who have no insurance at all and can't afford it anyway. I don't see how forcing them to buy it is helping them.

[TwilightGardener]

16. Are you among the working poor? Wouldn't you qualify for a subsidy

to help you pay your premium? That was the intent of the bill--assistance with premiums to go along with the mandate. If the exchange is set up as planned, you may also have a better choice of plan (even if a public option is not one of them), or at least be able to compare coverage and price. (edit to add--no offense, but your plan sounds crappy--40% copay for hospitalization, yikes).

[mdmc]

19. I , for one, am among the working poor as I cannot afford to live in the

area I live in and afford all the things I need (food, housing, transportation, health care).
I make $30k but it is very hard to make that work in this expensive part of the country.
So I am not "poor" as in poverty. but I am not middle class. perhaps lower middle class. i call it working poor cause that is how it feels..

[begin_within]

21. I guess I am now.

I've been self-employed for 14 years and until this past year I have been able to pay all my own bills including my health insurance and pay my taxes. It's never been much of an issue, I've had the money so I just mailed the check and that's it. But the recession has had a huge impact on my income, I only made half as much this year as in most years. On top of that I take care of my 91-year-old mother full time, literally 24/7 except when a nurse is here, so I am unable to get a second job due to that time committment. I guess if the bill provides a subsidy to me to help pay the premium (I currently pay $169/month for the above mentioned bare-bones policy, which I agree is crappy, but it's all I can afford at this time.), then it would help me. I was looking forward to the public option as an alternative, or at least to put pressure on the private insurers to offer better deals. If the economy was going like it was 14 years ago when I started my business, I would not even really have to worry about paying my insurance bill, but the economy is a major factor now. It seems like the wrong time to start imposing mandatory purchase of insurance.

[TwilightGardener]

25. That's a tough situation. Hope you get some help in this bill--or

at least you're not overburdened. If it makes you feel any better, I think the mandates don't kick in for years.

[begin_within]

26. Thanks, I appreciate it, but I'd rather have a public option. Or at least no mandate.

I personally think private health insurance now is a ripoff and really not worth buying. I rarely have any health problems so I could have gotten along fine for the last 14 years, but I bought it anyway just out of the fear that if I had a catastropic illness or accident which resulted in a stratospheric hospital bill, the insurance would shield me from that. And it did at one time (although it was with PacifiCare and I could not continue that after the COBRA period ran out). I had to have an unexpected appendectomy and PacifiCare paid the entire $11,000 bill after a few customary denial letters. But now the deal I have with Blue Shield seems pretty stingy. Now if say I had a $50,000 hospital bill for something, I'd be on the hook for $20,000 of that, and it would be devastating to me, unless the economy was in full swing and I was making money again. Thanks for your replies, I just hope some sense can be made of this system.

[mdmc]

18. now- access to clinics (mental health and community health centers)

if they can afford the sliding scale fee.

And under the bill so far it seems like Bernie Sanders got some community health center funding put in place.
So those are perks for the working poor.
Crumbs?
Ya'Betcha!.

[FrenchieCat]

10. Your friend is correct -

Krugman:
The usual suspects are out in force on the op-ed pages, declaring that the health reform bill doesn’t control costs, it’s a huge cost, etc.. And I had a new thought: part of what’s going on here, aside from the fact that these people just hate the idea of expanding social insurance, is that they haven’t looked at all at the actual numbers involved.

The theory of the reform is as illustrated above. Expanding coverage will, other things equal, increase health care spending. But the expansion of coverage is linked to a serious effort to control cost growth that will, one hopes, “bend the curve”, so that costs eventually fall below what they would have been otherwise.

What the bah-humbug crowd insists is that this is highly implausible; implicit or explicit in this claim is the idea that covering the uninsured is extremely costly. But it isn’t.

The key thing to understand in the coverage debate has always been that it costs surprisingly little to cover the uninsured. For the most part, the uninsured are relatively young, and hence have relatively low medical costs. Also, they receive a fair amount of uncompensated care, as well as spending funds out of pocket. So even if you ignore the possible monetary gains from preventive care, avoiding emergency room visits, and so on, we’re not talking about a vast rise in health care spending.

Take the CBO estimate of the cost of subsidies and Medicaid expansion in the Senate bill — that is, ignoring all possible cost savings. It’s $179 billion in 2018. Take the CMS projection of total health care spending in 2018: it’s more than $4.5 trillion. So the direct cost of expanding coverage — the initial bump in the blue curve above — is less than 4 percent of total health care spending. That’s the amount by which, on the current trajectory, health spending rises every 7 months.


http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com /

[Ozymanithrax]

12. I've seen several studies that show preventative health care increase lifespan...

by 5 to 20 years. The benefits of health care are real.

Forcing someone to buy health care and providing preventive health care will add to their lives. Health problems found early are less expensive to deal with. If caught late, when someone must go to the emergency room or die, they are far more expensive or even fatal. Those are real benefits.

Then there are the people who do not have health care because they simply can not afford it. The bill will subsidize the poor and make something available that they simply can not have.

Yes, making them buy health care is helping them because it provides real benefits.

[Fumesucker]

15. A lot of them will not be able to afford to use the insurance..

High deductible, high copay, high premium, that's not going to be doable for a great many people.

I see this as helping the middle class who have preexisting conditions, it will hurt the poor though because they won't have the money for the copays or the deductible that will come along with the premiums they can afford.

[stray cat]

24. Those below the poverty line and I think 100% above it will get Medicaid free

Others will get subsidized health care - however many people who think they are poor will not get the help they want to pay for insurance if they do not pay for it now.

[quiller4]

14. This bill significantly helps the poor by expanding Medicaid

dramatically. There is no forced purchase here--just a big expansion of state-federally funded medical aid. You aren't subject to mandates unless your income is well above poverty level.

[Uncle Joe]

20. It feeds the malignant tumor that drives up health care costs, thereby hurting most everyone except

for profit "health" insurance corporations, the corporate media, political "leaders" recieving for profit "health" insurance dollars in general and most specifically Republicans, I also believe Goldman Sachs will make out well.

Thanks for the thread, begin_within.

[earthboundmisfit]

22. As for the subsidies, have we any idea on how they're to be implemented?

If it's via "tax credits", what will people do that can't afford the initial outlay which would get get "credited" later? I hope it will be more workable for low-income folks than that. Hell, if I have to spend half my food money every month on insurance, the credit I get next year at tax time does not make up for what I can't feed my family all those months.

[stray cat]

23. It helps those in poverty and those 100% above poverty line; However thinking you are poor

doesn't cut it.

[lorylin]

27. Personally, I think it hurts the poor

I think unless and until we are bold enough to provide single-payer health coverage there will be people who will suffer. We're just playing into the hands of the health insurance sector. I have to stick with Bernie Sanders and Dennis Kucinich on this one. I know, I'm such a socialist.

[Ozymanithrax]

28. Single payer would not pass in this congress. A public option wouldn't even pass.

To wait until we are 'brave enough' consigns 50+ million people to continue dying at a rate of 45,000 per year because they have no health care.

This bill is a good beginning, even Howard Dean now states the bill should pass and will do a great deal of good. The entire Democratic caucus in the Senate, including Bernie Sanders and the progressive caucus.

Historically, bills are always flawed and are improved. Read the Civil Rights act of 1964 and follow its history of improvements. Look at the Constitution, that did not include any of the Bill of Rights. Look at any significant progressive piece of Legislation, from Social Security to Schip. Our system is evolutionary rather than revolutionary. It works by making incremental change.

I am stunned that we are on the verge of the most significant progressive legislation since Johnson and the only answer is that it is the creation of evil corporations who have forced every progressive Democrat in the Senate and Howard Dean to capitulate.

On the right we have DEath Panels and Grandma killers. From the left we have evil corporate kings.

It is time we thought about the good we can do and how to make what has been created better.

[treestar]

29. So it would be better to be bankrupt from medical bills

than to have insurance to cover it, just because it is mandated.

Better to be outside the system than to be in it, only because it is mandated.

Public schools should be closed. The poor are forced to go to them. Because they are forced to go to them, they are no good and worse than no education at all.

[Hello_Kitty]

30. So if public schools don't exist at all.

But some governmental entity is willing to offer you a "subsidy" that pays for your kids to go to private schools at 85%. If they would be able to convince the board that they qualified and were poor enough. Obviously it's so much better than the "single payer" system because that would mean that poor people would...Oh wait, that would be talking about public EDUCATION, which has, what do we call that, legal protection? Oh yeah, public schools. Why are you comparing public health care to public schools?