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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (11832)	11/24/2009 7:49:09 PM
From: Eric	Respond to of 42652

So you get it from your employer?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (11832)	11/24/2009 7:55:47 PM
From: Eric	Respond to of 42652

If you were a Boeing employee everyone there would qualify for insurance. It doesn't matter whether you are the president of the company or the janitor. They all pay the same rate because of "group coverage". It's a pool of risk management paid across all of the workers by the company. My father who was in senior management explained how they procured insurance for all of their workers.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (11832)	11/24/2009 8:47:29 PM
From: Eric	1 Recommendation Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 42652

You are fortunate that your employer pays for your healthcare. I quit my job with the State of Washington in 1983 to start my own business and began paying my own premiums with Group Health Cooperative here in the Seattle area. To give you an example of how expensive health insurance is my brother who is 56 pays $1147 per month for health insurance (just him!). His policy has no cap, no co pays except $5 for drugs. You cannot get this policy today, in fact you couldn't get it 8 years ago. Our policies were grandfathered in years ago fortunately. Thank god I have it.. Virtually all individual policies today only offer caps in the $2 million dollar or less range with large co pays. If you have a pre existing condition.. lots of luck. In most states you cannot get coverage. If my brother was in Britain his premium would be about $550, Germany about $750, Taiwan $475. All of those have no caps. Don't lose your job. A relative of ours was diagnosed with Crohns disease last year at the age of 17. His dad is a captain with Alaska airlines and his son is covered until he quits college. After that he is on his own. His medical bills ran about $85,000 last year. A very scary future for a young person.