Insurance Issues

Remember that it's MEDICAL (SICKNESS) CARE INSURANCE that you really are trying to get and I have to wonder if you really know that this isn't how you get health.

I remind you to listen to my interview with Dr. Katherine Albrecht to learn some of the things you aren't hearing in the media, or from the Beltway pundits trying to make you believe they are working for you.

What's happening with Obama's group of planners and the same working for members of Congress is nothing much and nothing new. It's all still in the court of Big Pharma and Big Insurance, and don't think it will be too much different or substantial change.

This is the latest corporate rip off waiting to happen, ... not.

Wonder if anyone has proposed major medical only coverage and the same for the politicians who are supposedly elected to serve their constituents. This would save billions in a blink of an eye.

Obama too, with a swipe of his pen, could overhaul the welfare citizens hand out to elected politicians, as far as their health benefits go.

Here's where 'change' needs to start.

10 Things Your Congressperson Won't Say

5. “My health benefits are way better than yours . . .”

Congresspeople love tinkering with our health care. They virtually created the managed-care industry, for instance, with the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, which tilted the playing field in favor of HMOs, ultimately stripping many Americans of all other choices. Meanwhile, congresspeople enjoy more than a dozen options, including prized indemnity plans, which provide reimbursement without limiting the pool of medical care providers, that few workers in the public sector receive. On top of that, for an annual fee of $480, they can get just about all the medical attention they want at the Capitol Office of the Attending Physician, which has five doctors and a dozen assistants on call for routine checkups, tests, prescriptions, emergency care, and mental health services. Who’s making up the difference? Taxpayers, naturally, to the tune of $2.8 million in 2008.

What happens once a congressperson is out of office? She needn’t fret: Just five years into the job, she’s entitled to keep her regular health coverage until she’s ready for Medicare. And she doesn’t have to pay extra, as you do for Cobra, under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which she voted for in 1996.

http://www.smartmoney.com/spending/rip-offs/What-Your-Congressman-Wont-Tell-You-20207/?page=5