Michele Bachmann says tax breaks should replace employer health plans

[highplainsdem]

Source: CBS News

WATERLOO, Iowa - Back in her hometown Monday, Republican presidential contender Michele Bachmann waxed nostalgic for an era when people were responsible for purchasing their own insurance, rather than being tethered to an employer for coverage.

"When I grew up here in Iowa, we owned our own health insurance. We didn't necessarily have it from our employer," she said.

Asked in a round-table with workers at OMJC Signal, a family-owned public-safety equipment manufacturer, how small businesses can afford health care for their employees, the Minnesota congresswoman said they shouldn't have to buy it.

"I think you should be able to own your plan, so your employer doesn't own it - you get to own it, and you buy it with your own tax-free money," Bachmann responded. She added, "You should be able to set aside whatever amount of your income you need to purchase the kind of health care you need for yourself, for your family."

-snip-

Read more: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20108617-503544.html

[Mojambo]

1. So says Bachmann, owner of health insurance provided by her employer. n/t

[mitchtv]

3. while hubby collects MedicAid/MediCare

from his patients

[SharonAnn]

14. Sorry, but I grew up in Waterloo, IA. My father was a surgeon and I know she's wrong.

She's not only wrong, she's lying!

I grew up there from the 50's through the 70's. Dad practiced there until the late 80's.

I worked in his office for a couple of summers while in college, filing medical insurance claims and tracking payments. Nearly all his patients had health insurance through their union contracts!

That's right! The daughter of a surgeon and I was raised on income from union contracts! How about them apples?

Waterloo had two very large union companies at the time: John Deere Waterloo Tractor Works and Rath Packing Plant. In addition, there were many other medium and small-sized companies that were either union companies or paid union-level wages and benefits in order to keep their employees.

Sure, there were people who didn't have insurance and they paid what they could. But we would've gone awfully hungry if 90% of the patients weren't employees (and families) from union companies or from companies that competed with them for labor.

Sorry, Michelle. You're lying! I know better and so do you.

And she didn't grow up in Iowa, either. That's also a lie.

[elleng]

17. Would you/could you write this in a paper there,

as a ltte responding to coverage she may receive? No need to say she's 'lying,' but 'set the record straight?'

[Indydem]

28. Is her bio itself a lie?

It says she lived in Iowa until 13.

Are they lying on the basics?

I had no heard she didn't grow up in Iowa, please provide more info.

[LonePirate]

2. Now she's bundling up her loony ideas to destroy America. One at a time must have been too slow

for her to make our lives miserable.

[RKP5637]

4. The woman is a sadist and she thinks all Americans are masochistic. n/t

[PSPS]

5. More stories from her imaginary childhood

Michele Bachmann waxed nostalgic for an era when people were responsible for purchasing their own insurance, rather than being tethered to an employer for coverage. "When I grew up here in Iowa, we owned our own health insurance."

Another day, another lie.

Let's see. Bachmann was born in 1956, which makes her 55 today. So she "grew up" in the 50's and 60's. During that period, over 75% of workers were covered by health insurance provided by their employers.

[daleo]

8. She wants to return to the era of beatniks, hippies and free love

Not to mention civil rights demonstrations and anti-war protests. Nice.

[SharonAnn]

16. And she didn't grow up in Iowa! She was born there but didn't grow up there.

That would be like me talking about the state I was born in and lived in for less than a year, rather than the one I grew up in.

She's a liear!

[BeyondGeography]

6. Very nice...Call us when you come back to earth, Michelle

[CBHagman]

7. A little background on her stances on health care...

See this link for quotes, fact checking, etc.

http://www.issues2000.org/House/Michele_Bachmann.htm

She's another one who gushes about the supposedly free market and how it's just the ticket for health care. Of course the market doesn't care if you are dropped from your health plan or are bankrupted (or DIE) because you can't afford care.

Never have I seen so many supposed followers of Jesus cozy up to Mammon instead...

[FarLeftFist]

9. And the crazy just keeps on comin'!

[EC]

10. Didn't she say her parents were farmers?

So many of the family farms around here have their own insurance too, it's called Badger Care - run by the state. Back in her childhood days I believe the farmers formed groups.

[bluestateguy]

11. Then support single payer

Many of her objectives would be achieved in that way.

1. Insurance coverage is divorced from the employer.

2. Your coverage would not depend on you having an employer that is generous enough to provide it.

3. Employers would still pay a premium (as they do for SS/Medicare), but it would be cheaper for most businesses than ever more expensive private insurance plans.

4. Premiums would be cheaper for most consumers, as opposed to the ever more expensive private insurance they must pay for. In effect, making that a tax cut.

[madrchsod]

12. i was born in 47...

my parents paid 7.50 for my mom and my 7 day stay in the hospital....

bachmann lives in a fantasy world

[Marie Marie]

13. It's official. These right wing lunatics really have ice water running through their veins.

and cotton balls in their skulls. Fuck you Bachmann!

[jwirr]

15. She apparently does not understand the need to pool users so that

all can be covered. It is going to cost a fortune if each individual buys their own.

[area51]

22. +1

Maybe she should try pricing her own coverage on the open market. :mad:

[Xithras]

31. She also doesn't seem to get how much more expensive the plans are nowadays.

I just had this discussion with my dad a few months ago. For a stretch of my childhood (from the late 70's to about 1984) my dad actually DID have a private health insurance plan that he paid for out of pocket. According to him, by 1983 he was spending about $120 a month out of pocket...to fully cover a family of FIVE. While that was no small penny back then, it was an easily achievable for a guy who was working a blue collar union job at the time.

Does she have ANY idea what a non-group family health insurance plan costs nowadays? Does she understand that, even adjusted for inflation, that plan would be at least TEN TIMES as expensive for a modern family to afford?

Besides, she's failing to understand something else, probably because she's never actually run a business of any real size. Employers don't offer benefits out of charity. They offer health coverage because it is disruptive to the business to have employees without insurance. The statistics don't lie...employees without insurance (and their children) get sick longer, stay sick longer, and lose more days of work. Every day an employee doesn't come in is another day that the employer has to pay extra for temp coverage, has to deal with reduced output, and has to spend dealing with co-workers who have to cover for the missing employee. The best employee is the healthiest, which is why it's in the employers interest to keep their employees and their families as healthy as possible. Offering insurance is the #1 way to accomplish that.

[truthisfreedom]

18. And how much will those individual plans cost the employees, Michele?

If you could fire up that single remaining brain cell and let us know how this saves ANYBODY money?

[annm4peace]

19. I swear to God, I would like to hit her with rotten tomatoes

I wish we could take some rotten tomatoes and just lob them at here at these events she speaks at.

[David Sky]

25. Just hit her with the cost of an individual health plan for a woman her age.

She would be happy to pay $14,000 out of her $180,000 salary.

SURE!

That woman is dangerous whenever she opens her mouth.

[SharonAnn]

32. ASsuming she has no "pre-existing" conditions, which could raise the amount drastically.

[Grassy Knoll]

20. love this nutty girl.....

going forward, in reverse...

[JDPriestly]

21. That was when Blue Cross/Blue Shield were non-profits, I think.

[Cass]

23. So why doesn't she refuse her government-sponsored health plan and buy it on the open market?

Hypocrits like Bachmann really frost my ass. This is a woman who has been making her living from the government since day one but can't complain enough about it. If the government is so freaking bad, then get the hell out of it and make your living elsewhere.

:argh:

[Thor_MN]

24. She exemplfies Idiots Out Wandering Around

Most people from Iowa don't fit that bill, but she sure does. The reasons that companies started having insuarnce plans is competition with other companies for the best employees. One of those "invisible hand" jobs. Now that companies want to ditch the plans because they have broken the economy, Batshit thinks she can gain some financial backing from coporations and revisionist nostalgia back from teabaggers with this announcement.

Hell, if everyone is going to buy their own plans, let's go whole hog, put the money all togther into one plan to save some money and call it, I don't know, Single Payer?

[Javaman]

26. How about the days when employers paid 100% health care?

I wax nostalgic for those days.

this woman is a fucking mindless jerk.

[SOS]

27. Considering

that Bachmann is polling at 5% of Republican voters,
we can comfortably begin ignoring everything she says.

[HockeyMom]

29. Union Clinics paid for out of Union Dues

That is what my ILA Dad had. None of my family bought insurance back then. We went to the clinic (free) for all our medical and dental needs. How far back does she want to go? This was in the 1950s when I was a kid. When I got my first job in 1966, I got medical benefits from the company I worked for.

Well, maybe this had more to do with the fact it was in NYC, rather than just the "good old days".

[Hell Hath No Fury]

30. As someone with many pre-existing conditions --

who cannot get health insurance at any cost outside of an employer, I say to Ms. Bachmann -- piss off. :mad:

[and-justice-for-all]

33. Bachmann is a fucking moron..nt