Health Care

Hello again...

Since there has been a lot of talk about the Universal Health Care program, I thought that I should throw a little bit of information out there for everyone to think about.

First off... If you don't know who your Congressional Delegation members are, try going to this site and see. http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ I am sure that at this point, the office staffers at both my Congressional members offices who download the email daily cringe when they see my email address. Here's how I look at it... How are they going to do "The business and the will of the people" if they don't know what it is? So... I tell them what I think... Maybe not daily, but surely weekly.

Anyway... Back to Health Care...

I received an email a few days ago that said that Congress had excluded themselves from the requirement for coverage under the Universal Health Care bill that they were working in the House. So... I went looking to try and verify that. Here's the information so that you can check it yourself, should you so desire. First, go to the Library of Congress' web site, which is http://www.thomas.gov/. Then you can search by either the title of the bill, key words in it, or the number. (NOT very user friendly, I assure you. Health Care is NOT the same as Healthcare.) Anyway, the bill that you are looking for is H.R. 3200IH, and the title is America's Affordable Health Choices of 2009. Now, who would think that this title would go with Health Care Reform? Sounds a little fishy to me, for sure...

Next on the list with this stuff... If you click on the link on the top left, it is GPO's PDF Display. That's the Government Printing Office's official certified copy of the bill. This thing is 1,018 pages, so unless you are having trouble sleeping, I don't recommend that you try to read it all... Which brings up another point, do you think that your Representatives have read it? ALL of it?

Now, when you start hunting for exceptions/exclusions from the health care program, go to Section 100 (Purpose; Table of Contents of Division; and General Definitions) Subsection (c) - General Definitions, Paragraph (6) - Employment-Based Health Plan, Sub paragraph (B), it says "such a plan that is the following: (i) A Government Plan... including a health benefits plan offered under Chapter 89 of Title 5 United State Code". Now, if you look up Chapter 89 of Title 5 USC, you will find that is the Heath Care Plan for Congress, the President, Vice President, former holders of those offices, and certain employees/staff members of those office holders...

So... Yes, they did exclude themselves from it... Now, that ain't universal health care, in my opinion... Sounds like another Social Security deal to me... We have to live with it, and they excluded themselves from it, and gave themselves a REALLY nice program of their own. The variation of the Golden Rule - He who has the Gold Makes the Rules - and makes the for his own benefit.

The other people who are excluded from the health care coverage are members of the US Armed Forces and their family members - who are already covered under TriCare, Veterans who are covered by the VA (both of these are already government health care systems, so if you want to know what it could be like, check with a member of the military or a vet who goes to the VA) and a few specific others.

While I was digging through this, I found another interesting bit of information. If you go to page 16, you will find under the heading of "Protecting The Choice to Keep Currant Coverage" a heading that is "Limitation on New Enrollment". It says "Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day" of the year the legislation becomes law. Now, I am not a lawyer, but as I read that it means that if you have private health insurance if this becomes law, you can keep it, but if anything ever happens and you loose it, you are done. There will be NO private health insurance. The only provision that I could find for a new enrollment was a new family member (dependent) for an insured person. Now, how many people work for private health insurance companies? What are they going to do? They will be out of jobs. How many companies are there out there who provide private health insurance? They will all fold... How many people own stock in those companies? What sort of impact will that make on the stock market?

Food for thought...