President Bush Is Supporting Policies to Make Gay and Heterosexuals Equal

[Brian_Expat]

In Healthcare!

(By eliminating health insurance and making everyone pay for health care out of their own pocket from "tax free savings plans.")

What a fucknut!

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-health31jan31,0,933948.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Emboldened by their success at the polls, the Bush administration and Republican leaders in Congress believe they have a new opportunity to move the nation away from the system of employer-provided health insurance that has covered most working Americans for the last half-century.

In its place, they want to erect a system in which workers — instead of looking to employers for health insurance — would take personal responsibility for protecting themselves and their families: They would buy high-deductible "catastrophic" insurance policies to cover major medical needs, then pay routine costs with money set aside in tax-sheltered health savings accounts.

Elements of that approach have been on the conservative agenda for years, but what has suddenly put it on the fast track is GOP confidence that the political balance of power has changed.

With Democratic strength reduced, President Bush, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Bakersfield) are pushing for action.

Supporters of the new approach, who see it as part of Bush's "ownership society," say workers and their families would become more careful users of healthcare if they had to pay the bills. Also, they say, the lower premiums on high-deductible plans would make coverage affordable for the uninsured and for small businesses.

And what do you bet that Congress will keep its own cushy health care plan?

[donco6]

1. These have been available to employers for a while now.

We can do this right now. Most employees don't want to deal with the high deductible, however.

[Brian_Expat]

3. When Dubya is done you won't have a choice

And what do you bet that "catastrophic care insurance" won't be available to gay men?

[donco6]

4. I know.

I'm kinda resigned to anything they come up with right now. I feel like those guys who sit on the dunking booth at the state fair. Who's gonna put the ball through the hole and dump me in the tank? When's it gonna happen - 'cuz you KNOW it's gonna happen . . .

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. Oh, sure. Coverage more affordable. Nothing like a high-deductible

to make people want to go to make regular health visits to the doctor, let alone go in and have anything major taken care of.

"I know you're having a heart attack, honey, but it's a $5,000 deductible for the emergency room, and $15,000 for the surgery and $300 a day in the hospital..."

These people are pure fucking evil.

[SmokingJacket]

5. We have a high deductible plan...

and let me tell you, it certainly makes me feel responsible for my own health care. I would **never** be caught downhill skiing, for example. I drive like an old lady. And I nearly had a heart attack when my (34 yr old) husband slipped on the ice today. I thought, "Oh, shoot! What would we do if he broke his ankle???" Not "Poor guy, that must hurt," but immediately "How are we going to pay for an x-ray?"

Congress people should be forced to live on a high deductible plan for a year or two, and they would see how nightmarish it is to know that any kind of small accident will wipe out your savings account, and then some.

If you have a fever and a cough, you think, is this pneumonia, or will I have to pay $200 to find out it's just a cold? So you stay home until you spit up blood.

That this does anything to make gays and heterosexuals on a par healthcare-wise is a freaking joke.

[Brian_Expat]

6. If we all lack health care. . .

. . . then we're all equal!

George W. Bush has brought us TRUE EQUALITY in health care! We all have an equal right to die bankrupt! :)

[SmokingJacket]

7. Yep. The dead are all perfectly equal. nt

[Dark]

8. Hopefully Dems will stop it. They have the votes.

Sadly, though, most middle class people will just say 'Even better, now those leeching poor will have to have MORE personal responsibility.

[Technowitch]

9. Figures. Only works if you have money to put in a 'tax-sheltered' acct

Which, of course, the poor and disabled won't have.

What an uncompassionate ass. Of course, those sheep-buggerers never wanted for anything in their whole, sorry, privileged lives.