Palin pick?

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-06-2004
Palin pick?
204
Wed, 09-03-2008 - 2:02pm

Palin pick?



  • Always planned on voting for McCain
  • Now voting for McCain because of pick
  • Now voting for Obama because of pick
  • Always planned on voting for Obama


You will be able to change your vote.


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iVillage Member
Registered: 04-09-2006
In reply to: schimzoegirl
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 12:24am

"I do not think health care should only be based on ability to pay. I believe that all should have access to affordable health care. A level of universal coverage, with wellness visits and catastrophic coverage should be universal IMO."

I appreciate you comment. I was beginning to wonder what third world nation I'd blundered into.

I do have children with chronic, potential devastating medical conditions: type 1 diabetes. It's an autoimmune condition, unrelated to lifestyle. We have no family history of this condition at all. We have health insurance through his employer (a state university, a "government" job); our part of the premiums is about $6000 per year. Last year we paid more than $6000 in additional health costs. We have NEVER been irresponsible or "worked" the system, but if we didn't have employer sponsored health insurance, we wouldn't be insurable. We'd also be bankrupt. Mr. McCain wants to end employer sponsored health insurance, starting by taxing my health insurance benefit. Health care for the poor, as it stands, does not provide adequate care for children with diabetes.

My taxes pay for lots of things that I don't use, or use sparingly. For years I homeschooled all of my kids. My house has never caught on fire, but I pay for fire protection, in the form of taxes, without complaint. Ditto for law enforcement. My taxes have paid for roads. My taxes, present and future, were used to start a war based on false pretenses. My taxes have been used to pay for WIC and Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and the Veteran's Administration. And so forth. I'm not and never will be a direct beneficiary of most of these programs. I find the attitude of "every man for himself, and if you can't pay for your family's healthcare, it means that you're not responsible and you didn't plan out your finances properly and you're working the system" absolutely CHILLING. I've never said to anyone, "Your grandma's drawn far more out of Social Security than she ever put it; she just wasn't responsible and didn't save for retirement", or "I'm not sending my kids to public school, and I won't pay any school taxes because I don't care if your kids get a good education or not", or "I'm careful with fire and I'm not gonna pay for fire protection for all the people who didn't clean their chimneys this fall", or "I don't support this war so I'm not paying taxes", or "I'm privately insured so I don't want to pay for your Medicaid; just go to the emergency room", or "I'm not gonna pay taxes because the U.S. government is bailing out corporations with irresponsible leadership, and the CEO's are walking away with severance payments of several million dollars apiece". (Maybe that last is where some of our focus should be going, rather than deciding that we're going to deny some citizens adequate health care.) Government is not by definition more "wasteful" than private business. Our last insurer was Anthem, a private insurance company; a few years ago the head honcho made over $40 million dollars in ONE YEAR. That's a lot of premiums. It's a legal "pyramid scheme". There's no government job that pays even close to that kind of money, by at least two orders of magnitude. Mr. McCain wants us all to be insured separately (not in groups), by private insurance companies. Except for those of us who would not be insurable, because some members of our families have "pre-existing conditions".

I don't particularly like the healthcare schemes which have been proposed by either party, but we have to work with what we have, which means voting for the candidate with the philosophy which is closest to what is best for our citizens. In my case, I'm not going to choose the guy whose plan is going to make my children ineligible for adequate medical care with his "privatization" scam. The government bails out the corporate victims of deregulation gone wild, but has less compassion for private citizens caught in the same net.

iVillage Member
Registered: 08-02-2008
In reply to: schimzoegirl
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 1:10am

My post was not directed at someone who pays--I fully understand that it is those with insurance who bog the companies down with the costs of unnecessary and frivolous doctor visits. In fact, I don't believe in fully covered well visits or sick visits, to a point. I think well visits should not be covered at all, and you should have a sick visit cap, let's say 5 visits, or a $500 deductible, before insurance even starts to pick up part of the tab. Much of what people are suffering from is treatable at home and in many cases preventable with diet and lifestyle changes. If parents quit jacking their kids up on sugar, they'd probably get sick 75% less and for a much shorter duration. But most parents don't know little things like sugar depresses the immune system. And your pediatrician probably won't tell you that either. But I digress..

Anyway, it's not the uninsured "run with a sniffle" crowd I was speaking of--you missed my point entirely. It's the INSURED crowd that has coverage and sticks the insurance company with a bill for a reassurance visit or a completely unnecessary visit with the though, "Isn't that what insurance is for? I mean, why not? I don't have to pay for it!" My grandmother drives me nuts with this. She is bored and goes to the ER twice a month with "vomiting and diarrhea," sits in a waiting room for 7 hours and doesn't even go to the bathroom once, and because she's a quad-bypass valve-replacement survivor and has a 6cm aortic aneurysm, they run every test known to man and do CT scans out the wazoo, and meanwhile she's not even sick. She just went through $17,000 of tests because she thinks she has cancer because the neighbor died of cancer and she's been there longer. She doesn't have a single symptom of any disease. But this year alone, with not a single diagnosis of anything wrong with her--she's wracked up medicare charges over $100,000 in just ER visits and diagnostic screening tests. She likes when people get nervous and fret over her, and she loves to complain. I don't know what it is, but it's not a medical illness, even though she's singlehandedly running up the medicare costs for the entire state!

There is a grocery store chain called Wegman's on the east coast, and they have the perfect employee plan. It's a full coverage plan, not just major medical, with doctor and specialist visits not covered until you reach your pretty high $2000 deductible. Then they are covered at 80%. The high deductible makes the plan more affordable for the employer, but there's a benefit to the employee: the employer has agreed that, for every dollar of your deductible you DON'T use, the employer will put that amount in a healthcare spending account, and that money will remain there and roll over indefinitely, and you can even take it with you when you change jobs. So there is an incentive program built in: "Hey, if I just suck it up and drink some hot tea and chicken soup instead of paying the $150 office visit, that's $150 more in my pocket for the future." "Hey, if I just take some motrin and rest for a few days, that's more money in my account so that when it's time to have a baby, I can afford the copays." "Hey, if I shop around for a doc with a $75 office visit instead of a $175, I can save for my future." So by caring for yourself and avoiding the doctor except in cases of true necessity, you can actually take responsibility for the cost of your own care, both now and in the future. The only ones who don't like it are the docs--there is suddenly a reason now to avoid unnecessary and frivolous office visits, and there is a reason to start price-shopping doctors. It's the way the free market was designed, and I think it's brilliant!

I'm all for choices--if you have fun in emergency rooms, great, but don't saddle others with the cost of your choices to get unnecessary treatment. And I think most people would assume from my post that I'm not talking about "difficulty breathing"--that's more than just a "common illness running a normal course" which was pretty close to my exact words. And those are the kinds of things parents should be educated about and are not. I don't even call when my kids sniffle or cough, much less go in. But I never for a moment intimated that trouble breathing was something I would lump into the normal course of a harmless cold and "ignore." I think my post was clear: my problem is suffering increasing premium costs because of the high volume of insured people running otherwise healthy kids (and themselves) to the ER, urgent care and doctor for what is or should be obvious is non-life threatening, non-emergency common illness running a routine course and requiring no medical intervention.

And it is the fault of medical care providers, particularly state agencies such as medicaid and medicare that our culture takes the inaccurate and costly position that you seem to have taken: that it's tantamount to child neglect not to run to the doctor for every boo boo and sniffle or amass a 6" pile of well visit records by the time a kid enters kindergarten. But it sure is good for business, and it's a real rah rah when it's time to raise taxes and fund these state insurance programs! And I think I also made it clear that I'm not advocating "ignoring" children's health--you'll see from my post that I am clearly very attentive to to my childrens' health. Despite the details I shared, you leapt to the erroneous and unsupported conclusion that I find it "inconvenient" to obtain routine care for my kids. If you must know, it's not inconvenient--the doc is 5 miles away. I just feel, in the case of a non-emergency, it's entirely unnecessary. Why does my baby need to go to the doctor 8 times in the first year? He's eating, he's well, he's growing, he's gaining, he's seeing and hearing--I can tell all of that, I don't need a "professional"--I'M the expert on my kids, not some stranger with a medical degree. I'm advocating the OPPOSITE of ignoring--I'm advocating being vigilantly attentive to your kids behavior and health and confidently taking charge of it as a parent, so you don't have to have someone help you figure out that your kid just has a cold or a boo boo. I don't know how your pediatrician determines "nothing's wrong," but I've never seen any of them do any more than look and listen when it comes to common childhood illnesses. No lab tests, no special skill. Just observe--I can do that at home for free, and since I know my kids better than they do, I'm better at it. If someone can't breathe, that's one thing. But the croup? I'll try a hot shower and warm tea before racing off to get the steroids from the ER. Not because it's not convenient--nothing about raising a brood of 6 is convenient, I don't care about that--but because it works for me to be the primary caretaker of my children's health, I'm confident in my ability to care for my kids' normal illnesses, I've taken the time to research and learn about childhood illnesses and what iI can do at home to alleviate their symptoms. I just know my kids well enough to know when they're OK, just need a little TLC. Doctors are for when my very finely and deliberately honed mother's instincts and keen observations tell me my children need more than I can provide. And it's happened, and I have acted immediately. But that's why I'm on the job--and I'm the best one for the job. And if you knew me, you'd never for a moment insinuate that I "ignore" my kids, or avoid what's inconvenient. It's all I do, and it's 6 full time jobs in one. And if you want the reassurance of a doctor every time, that's your choice--but I shouldn't have to pay for it in premium hikes and increased costs for visits. And I can't be more clear: I'm not saying it's YOU causing this--I'm talking about those who are.

So, please don't bother being offended--those who PAY aren't the ones weighing things down--it's the free riders that take advantage of their coverage for unnecessary diagnostics and "treatment" are.




Edited 9/19/2008 1:12 am ET by nikkiwantsmore
pregnancy week by week
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-02-2008
In reply to: schimzoegirl
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 1:37am

Today, the government "bailed out" another company for billions of dollars because they were "too big to fail".

Don't even get me started on this--I think they did it because they're "too corrupt to risk getting caught." We didn't socialize OUR risk, we socialized THEIR risks of getting busted with their hands in the cookie jar when the big investigation exposed the corruption. In a free market (which is quickly moving toward a market that will only operate with the Government's stamp of approval), a business flopping--I don't care how big--triggers some very natural corrections that have the health of the marketplace return without slamming the costs down the taxpayer's throats, or selling more of our economy to China. I don't agree with "socializing" the risk of corrupt politicians any more than people who haven't properly planned their finances.

>>>"The system is broken, and EVERYONE agrees on that fact."
I disagree. Our country doesn't have a "healthcare system" and that's why it doesn't work for those who think it should. It's a free marketplace--and it's working the way we, the consumers of the products and services, have driven it to work. We as a culture think nothing about going to Home Depot and telling them, "Lowe's has the same installation service for $150 less--if you don't bring your price down, I'm going next door." However, NO ONE thinks to price compare doctors. When was the last time you asked a doctor, "How much is your routine care? Emergency care? Well visit? Sick visit?" When was the last time you asked a dentist, "How much is a cleaning? X ray? Filling?" Do you even KNOW how much these cost if your insurance covers them? These docs can and do charge WHATEVER they want, and forget it if you have no insurance--they'll charge you 3 times what they charge the insurance companies. An educated consumer controls the market, and Americans have handed control to their doctors and drug companies. Someone had the nerve to tell me, "We don't choose our treatment, the doctor does." That explains what's wrong--it's not the system, it's the failure of the patron to know what they're paying for, and demand that they receive it at a reasonable rate, or switch. Only we can put these greedy drug companies and overpriced, overtreating docs out of business and take our healthcare back into our own hands. And it's the same complacency with demanding something more than the industry is providing that has us not only in a healthcare crisis but an energy crisis too. Complacency leads to crisis, which seems to lead many to seek a government funded solution.

And I love this talk of "access." Access just means you could get it. Everyone has access--the ones who lack MEANS {read: MONEY} are what everyone' crying about. And if I lack means for repairing my car's transmission, or buying groceries, or getting GAS, that's not the goverment's job to bail ME out. Healthcare isn't as important as food or getting to work for many people, but I don't hear people talking about, "Our grocery system is BROKEN! What about the millions who can only afford rice and beans? We all need ACCESS and AFFORDABLE, QUALITY FOOD!"

Uh, oh, I don't want to give anyone any ideas...socialized medicine, socialized retirement, next: socialized MEAL PLAN!

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siggy1
pregnancy week by week
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-18-2008
In reply to: schimzoegirl
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 1:59am
Um... Palin is in favor of putting it to the states... how is that AGAINST?
iVillage Member
Registered: 08-02-2008
In reply to: schimzoegirl
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 2:13am

>>>I believe that all should have access to affordable health care.

All DO have access. They just might not have the money. That's life. I'm sure you believe that all should have access to food, but do you advocate government subsidized groceries for all?

>>>A level of universal coverage, with wellness visits and catastrophic coverage should be universal IMO.

And what of taking responsibility for yourself? I think THAT should be universal. If it were, we might not need subsidized healthcare.

My husband and I have busted our butts and made sacrifices to make darn sure my family has the access and insurance they need. And if we couldn't make it work, I wouldn't cry to Uncle Sam to foot the bill and fill in where I have failed to provide for the basic needs of my family. And it's sad and a shame, but there will always be "those less fortunate," there will always be those who, for one reason or another, "can't make it work." It's not the job of government to provide for the basic needs of every individual just because they can't afford it. I wholly disagree with that use of government.

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siggy1
pregnancy week by week
iVillage Member
Registered: 07-16-2008
In reply to: schimzoegirl
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 2:31am

So, please don't bother being offended--those who PAY aren't the ones weighing things down--it's the free riders that take advantage of their coverage for unnecessary diagnostics and "treatment" are.


Then please don't direct your negative posts at me in the future.


Elissa


ETA:

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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
In reply to: schimzoegirl
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 6:25am
But.....if they have no health conditions and are past the frequent vaccination visit to the doctor do they need health care??????
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
In reply to: schimzoegirl
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 6:34am
ALso what people fail to take into consideration is that there are health insurance plans with higher deductables that are cheaper, however people want health insurance that covers everything.....whether they need it or not.
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
In reply to: schimzoegirl
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 6:44am
And how much over those years did you pay in insurance premiums???
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-19-2003
In reply to: schimzoegirl
Fri, 09-19-2008 - 6:48am
They have found a way to get some companies to provide the state minimum for car insurance for high risk drivers.

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