Originally posted by Sue S.:
I took a week off and I swore I wasn't going to argue politics, but... Virginia, who pays three-fourths of his/her income for health insurance? I have never heard of anyone who does that, so if you can find some evidence please let me know. If it's true, maybe it will change some minds.
"You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you're now going to get free health care, particularly if you don't have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity, I mean, this is huge," he said. Thank you, Sue. I agree with you. I usually come to the Boards to avoid RL, but in case you're all curious, the answer is: ME.
Before my son was born (BEFORE Obama took office, mind you), we crunched the numbers. If we took the health insurance offered at my husband's work it would have cost us that much of his take-home pay (true, that was net, not gross, but when every penny counts those details don't mean much). Since then, we were able to sign up for a discounted health insurance through the state*, but neither myself or my husband have dental or vision (which we sorely need and for which we currently pay out-of-pocket).
We live in fear that we'll "earn" too much and lose even the little that we have. We can hardly afford the insurance at its current rate; a few more hundred a year in salary that might bump us over the line would hardly pay for the several hundred (at least $500+)
more a month we'd have to pay to get private insurance for a family of four.
I can understand your hesistation on having the government run our health care, after how well (sarcasim) they've treated our Veterans in many of those run-down hospitals. When it came up for debate in my local area whether or not to close our local VA Hospital, the Veterans said they'd rather get care in a run-down hospital than not get care at all (or the equivalent of that since they would have to travel hours to get to next closest VA Hosptial). Luckily, our local VA hospital (which has been remodeled in recent years, I believe) was saved during the latest round of cuts.
*Since the recent recession our state's discounted insurance has been frozen and many people, in the same boat as us, have been kicked off and nobody new in-need has been allowed on.
