Feds may make health insurance easier after layoff

[spinbaby]

Source: AP

WASHINGTON – It will get vastly cheaper for most people to keep health insurance after losing a job if the government's stimulus plan becomes law. Some nickel and dime cuts in health coverage for the poor will be reversed, too. Geek jobs in medicine will grow.

(snip)

For those who qualify, relief would be substantial.

Under a dramatic, temporary expansion of COBRA, the law that lets the unemployed keep health insurance from their old job for up to 18 months if they pay for it in full, costs would drop by about two-thirds for a year.

Moreover, people who lose a job they've had for 10 years could stay on COBRA at their expense all the way to age 65, when Medicare takes over, if they don't get another job with insurance first. People 55 and over could do the same without meeting the 10-year requirement.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090202/ap_on_go_co/stimulus_health_care;_ylt=AgZUGY1bIe0LBlUfxCeSu8UDW7oF

[kestrel91316]

1. How about making it cheaper for self-employed people who

are struggling to keep the doors of their businesses open and can't come up with $500+/mo for premiums and a $1500 deductible?

SINGLE PAYER MEDICAL COVERAGE NOW. Cut the fat out. Get rid of the bloodsucking middlemen.

[global1]

2. Here - Here - I'm With You - Except That I'm Paying Close To $1,000 Per Month......

as a owner of my own business.

Single payer is the only way to go.

But first we have to get rid of Daschle as he is not our friend in this. He's beholden to the insurance companies.

[spinbaby]

3. Hey, I'm only the messenger

Don't yell at me.

[PA Democrat]

9. My husband and I are self-employed and I HATE health insurers

like I never imagined being able to HATE in my life. I could write a book on their greedy and corrupt practices.

[Donnachaidh]

4. ONLY a year?

So that two thirds you save during that first year will be pretty much destroyed when that extra eight months kicks in at FULL price.

Yeah, make the older Americans who get kicked out of jobs pay FULL price after the first year, and ALLOW THEM to continue paying FULL PRICE as long as they want to.

Jaysus H. Kee-rist on a cracker -- this only helps the INSURANCE companies! It's BULLSHIT. And it's worse than bullshit, because it tells the older workers of the US they can go to hell, we don't CARE about you.

[aquart]

5. Gosh, fellas...YOU STILL DON'T GET IT.

Universal single payer healthcare. Now. And if every Republican votes against it, REJOICE.

[harun]

17. I'm with yah!

[Extend a Hand]

6. I wonder if it will be applied retroactively

to people who are already laid-off?

[BlueJac]

7. Wow.............

That would mean I pay only twice as much as I was co-paying with half the income. Might sound good to some and really sound good to the insurance companies. I will have to go without health care now that I have been laid off.


Universal single-payer health care, everything else is a joke!

[JeanGrey]

8. Excuse me but COBRA is horribly overpriced. HOW is the government

paying this help? I just don't get it. We pay more for health insurance and FOR medicine than any country in the world. Everyone knows National Health Care is cheaper so why in hell don't we have it? This is crazy!

[clixtox]

11. Could the current health care fiasco be caused...

by our government, which, IMHO, is just a masquerade?

Actually our government is the corporations that prey on the us!

The banks, insurance, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, retailing, media, especially the media, and some other corporate oligopolies, are all controlled by the Quisling minions of the super and uber rich, believe it or not!

These heartless, blood-sucking, rich oligarchs make ALL the important decisions.

Our so-called "Democracy", a sick joke!

"Elections" are a bamboozling exercise in a rigged, one-party system where all of the "electable" candidates are in on the charade and faithfully and forever dedicated to their corporate patrons.

Our masters only goal, as always through history, is to maintain the status quo, and their absolute control, by absolutely, and I mean absolutely, any means.

Propagandizing consistently to deny that there is a "class war" is one important corporate focus.

The fact that so few people understand this fundamental dynamic is vivid testimony to how "dumbed down", confused or complacent most USA citizens have become.

Single-Payer, Universal Health Care, the only viable solution, isn't even on the table in DC!

Forget about it!!!!

The Insurance cabal, an integrated component of the interwoven oligopolies, will never allow such a radical(fundamental) change no matter how needed or popular Single-Payer is, or becomes.

Insure the poor?

The children?

Remove the parasites from the health care system?

Make health care a human and civil right available freely to all?

Not a chance while we are wasting trillions of dollars on so-called "defense"!

WE are living in a FASCIST run country!

Fascism is when the corporate/business elites and any government share goals and power.

When issues like health care, peace, education, poverty or equality are under consideration our government's fascist reality is manifest, and manifested again consistently in all of it's cruel decisions.

That these are issues still being debated at all is absolute proof that our Federal government doesn't represent the vast majority of the people.

Think for yourself, don't believe anything, not even me!

Who are you going to believe?

The M$M or your lying eyes?

Stop chugging the Oxymoron gas...

Think.

[JeanGrey]

14. I was not one of those dumb enough to think that Obama

would bring us NHC.

[ThoughtCriminal]

10. Still unaffordable

For us, it would now only be 100% of our post-layoff income instead of 150%. As long as we are homeless and do not eat anything, we might be able to keep health insurance for a few months.

[clixtox]

12. Don't allow your boundless optimism to cloud over the ugly reality... Please!

Please excuse the sarcasm.

Your plight resonates with me, I am just a wee bit luckier.

I still have an income but, like most folks, I am now and have never been comfortably far from the financial/health abyss.

You, me and all working people are screwed now and surely doomed under/with the current paradigm!

Our complacency and ignorance are required to maintain the charade.

Try writing your representatives?

Two or three times...

Feel better?

The jokes on us but it isn't the least bit amusing while people are dying every minute in the USA due to our dysfunctional "health-care" system.

[OhioChick]

13. Most people are living paycheck to paycheck....

If one gets laid off.....how will this help?

Right. It won't.

[Skittles]

15. it's just another fucking gimmick

[Vinca]

16. Baloney. The average premium is $1200 . The average unemployment

check is $200 a week. Whoop-de-doo. Only $400 for health insurance leaving $400 for mortgage, food, utilities, car payments, etc. for an entire month. Universal single payer now. This is idiotic.