gabriel wrote:

Phil wrote:

4. Now we want cheap prescription drugs and healthcare. Guess who
pays, companies, you and I in the form of taxes, and those who buy our
products. Nothing from the government is free, it’s our tax money!

Now, if the government would _shorten_ drug patent length to encourage
generic medicines and allow foreign dugs to be imported you would have a
point.


Trouble is if you allow that, the research and development portions of drug
companies will dry up. No new meds. The drugs that are imported are cheaper
for a whole host of reasons, the big one is the drug companies know they can
get if from the us because we can afford it, most nations can't. It costs
huge bucks to bring a new drug through clinical trials to market. If the
drug company can't recoupe that, they won't bring new drugs into being. Do
you want that?

The government, though, is taking the side of the big business (drug
companies) and so that's what's really pushing the costs of health care
up. This has nothing to do with taxes.


So who do you think owns the big companies? Us, the stock buying, pension
fund receiving, mutual fund buying public. None of the biggies are privately
owned. How many jobs does a $100,000 a year company support? How many does
a billion doallar year company support? Simple math.


5. We want our companies to give us free health, life, dental and
vision insurance, higher pensions, retirement health care, long term
disability…… It all goes into the bottom line so our products are
more expensive.

This is not a new concept... I would buy it if everyione had started
demanding health care in recent years. What is truly happening is health
care cost is going up, with benefits going down. How do you explain
that?


Easy, goto a smorgasboard and watch how many people don't stuff themselves,
nobody. Also they waste food because they try it, don't like it, throw it
away. Correlation to health insurance, before the hmo,ppo model you had a
deductable, when people got a scratchy throat they would say I'll give a
couple of days it will probably go away on it's own it would cost me $40 to
see a dr.. Now it's, I pay my insurance, doesn't cost me anything to see the
dr, I might as well use it. See it among my coworkers all the time. Before
hmo's my dr's waiting room was few patients you could get in to see him no
problem. The hmo started, no copay, same dr. office full no place to sit, a
week waiting to see. Look at auto insurance for new young drivers, it so
high because the insurance company knows very high likelyhood it will have to
pay out in the first couple of years. They are not going to lose money.


What really ****es me off these days is people want cheaper
healthcare insurance.

Actually we want insureance prices not ro rise. Where is the big
movement for cheaper health insurance?


Your right, my words didn't fit what I meant. It ****es me off, because
we're demanding no costs to use it, insurance should be just that, taking on
risk. The model has changed and the insurance companies know that your going
to spend thousands each year because it doesn't cost the user any extra, so
that becomes the new premium baseline.


There are lots of examples, though, of health insurance costs rising so
much that companies have started to pass most of (or all of) the
insurance costs to the employee. Simply look at the grocery worker case
in southern California.


Exactly, go back to the deductable model. Look at your homeowners insurance,
raise the deductable and the recurring costs go down significantly. The
insurance knows that most claims are less than a few thousand, the real risk
of a major homeowners payout above that is infrequent. (although stupid
lawsuits are making that more frequent) If your willing to take on the risk
of the first few thousand, they reward you. True insurance.


So we have no or low co-payments, but it’s now
costing us weekly premiums out of our paychecks cause everybody goes
to the Dr. when they sneeze.

You DO have the option of not belonging to a health insurance plan you
know. Why not just get out of it?


I'm fortunate, I've got great insurance, costs me peanuts. It's one of those
that is helping drive the cost up. I don't even have the option of taking a
deductable based model.


The people that use the service should
pay.

Do you even know what the business model of insurance is???? Jeeez!


Absolutely, I don't think YOU have figured it out, isurance is cost verses
risk. If everybody uses at least $10,000 in medical care each year, do you
think the insurance premium is going to be less than that a year? Think
about it! My auto insurance coverage could cost the insurance company a
million bucks if the claim was maxed. My health insurance is the same
million. My health insurance costs my company around $12000 a year for me, I
pay $600 a year on my auto. The risk of a million dollar payout is higher in
an auto accident.


Everybody else should pay a reasonable amount for the risk of a
costly medical issue.

There are plans for that. If that's what you really want, get out of
your HMO/PPO and join one of those you describe. There are dirt cheap
plans that come with a $5000/year deductible. This is exactly what you
describe. Don't attack HMOs because the "M" in "HMO" stands for
"maintenance, which means "regular doctor visits."


And just who do you think pays for those regular dr's visits. You or your
company does in your insurance premium.


There is a large portion of our society that
beats the drum of socialism that doesn’t label it socialism.

Absolutely, this surprises you?

11. Nothing will change until each person takes responsibility for
themselves and their family, ask less of their employeer, local, state
and federal government.

Won't happen. Governments exist precisely because this will never
happen.


On this point I agree, we're toast, but we can work towards limiting
government if people understand what is really going on, not some socialist
propaganda.


If you don't have police, the dirt bag with the bigger gun will win. If
you do not have structured laws and a court system to enforce them you
have no progress. If you want to live a life without outside support at
all (ie, from the govt), you better set up a farm, and buy lots of guns.

US product we buy is made up of wages, taxes and benifits. A business
is considered successfull if they profit 10 cents on the dollar. Oh,
buy the way, that 10 cents of profit comes to you and me in our mutual
funds, pensions (equities), Certificate of Deposits.........


Dude I understand economics, what didn't you understand about that? Your top
corporations make 12% earnings in a great year. That 12 cents on the
dollar. Banks are tickled at half that. Who do you think, gets that 10 or
12 cents in a publically owned company? It's called dividends, interest and
stock splits my friend.


Dude, you need to study economics. This makes no sense.


Dude, get a clue, how do you think it works?


Free enterprise works, trouble is the rest of the world hasn't gotten
social security, welfare, healthcare, good roads yet so their cheaper.
So we buy from them more and more.

You really, really, really need to study economics. This is not how the
world works. Chinese labor is NOT cheaper because they pay less for
medical insurance. The solution to our problem is NOT to let our roads
deteriorate to an Afghanistan level. You need to study economics.


Did you read this? The chinese don't have social security, welfare,
medicare, unemployment, pensions, 4 weeks vacation, super highways
everywhere....do you know how much the cost of healtcare costs a buyer of us
auto's? Many years ago it hit $1,000 per car when you bought a $15,000 car.
i.e. it would have cost $14000 if the autoworkers had no healthcare. I'M NOT
ADVOCATING THAT, but benefits are a real portion of our manufactured
products.
I don't want to go live in any other country, I like the comforts of ours,
but we have to either change our demands, be more productive, take more
individual risks and responsibilities or we'll lose jobs to China and others
until they get to the same level of government and benifits we have.


--
gabriel