rollzone, July 9 at 12:46 am #
do i need to move to another planet?

Nope, just to Canada, or France, or any number of nations in which health care is free cradle to grave..My personal choice is Switzerland.

hello. i want to know insurance is not run by the new mafia. i want healthcare prices that are affordable without insurance. i want lower taxes and less government. do i need to move to another planet?

Oh my goodness! Lost jobs! How horrible. We must immediately scrap the single-payer legislation, especially if it’s going to cost jobs in the vital field of prescription drug salesmen.

How will we ever cope without drug-pushers going from doctor’s office to doctor’s office, handing out free drug samples like candy. They provide a vital service to society, making sure the medical community is informed and ready to prescribe new miracle drugs to treat such horrible diseases as Restless Leg Syndrome. Or new formulations of opioid painkillers which are responsible for most of the 27,531 deaths in 2006 from prescription drugs. Or pitching drugs for smoking cessation which have the unfortunate side effects of causing hallucinations, seizures, heart problems, and suicide.

Beyond what the pundits leave out, there’s also what your accounting leaves out: the many more than 100,000 jobs that will be created by a public option for health insurance. Consumers and employers will be saving bundles of money on health-care costs driven downward (finally!) by competition. Businesses will be able to hire more employees, and consumers will be able to spend and invest the extra cash in their bank accounts.

And the public option will also help people like me, unemployed since December. My wife and I are 47 years old and both have several “pre-existing conditions” which would have made private insurance too expensive—even while excluding payment of any claims for those conditions. Until the advent of the 6-month COBRA premium reduction contained in the stimulus package, I had to use most of my limited savings in order to pay my $1200 monthly health insurance premium while receiving $1520 per month in unemployment insurance.

So, please forgive me if I’m not shedding tears for the people in your industry. Maybe they should try for jobs lobbying Congress on behalf of the health-care industry. I hear it’s a booming industry right now.

Medsearch… 

Oh well… 

I hate to sound insensitive to anyone about to lose a job (if in fact you are about to)..  But the ridiculous amount of money we waste in this country by having a greedy middleman who is allowed to make all the decisions is pitiful. 

If it means 100,000 people have to be retrained in a more honorable profession… so be it. 

We have an economic crisis that is largely a result of the greed of that industry. 

I do not believe private insurance will disappear anyway.  There will always be those wealthy individuals and corporations that will buy into it. 

For myself, I’ll take the public option any day.

What none of the pundits pitching the single payer system are willing to discuss, is the fact that it will cost the nation over 100,000 jobs!

At my company, http://www.gorillamedicalsales.com , a job board for medical device sales representatives and pharmaceutical sales representatives to seek employment in their industry, we are already seeing vacant sales positions left unfilled as medical companies prepare for Obama’s health care reform.

It’s “Rainmaker” time - like the movie.
I once served 4 years in the USAF - that means I had “single payer” during that time - it was fine: no “rationing” (GOP Lie #1), no waiting in line (no more than any other GI line like for chow, no out of pocket expenses, no deductibles, no COB, no family deductibles, no co-pays ..... unless you count paying for a phone or TV or meals in the hospital room.  This is the coverage Congress gets.  Moreover, people like John McCain and his family have had this coverage ltierally for generations - they know nothing about “private insurance”. 
  I now have worked 41 years in software development - nearly 2/3 of that time for hospitals, drug companies, and health insurance companies.  I have seen what private insures do to avoid paying even the simplest claims.  I have seen drug companies charge a fraction of their costs in other countries while forcing US citizens to pony up huge profits.  I have seen CEOs turn companies from mutual to profit-only - companies that used to return 96 cents of each premium dollar which now return only 60 cents per…. and are being sued by doctors and hospitals for non-payment of claims.  I have seen arrogant doctors who blithely reject million-dollar projects and studies to cut costs “just because”. 
  It’s time ordinary citizens reject the GOP lies along with the drug companies and private insurer lies. 
....... just in case, I am learning Swedish and French - I am old and may have to emigrate to get health care.

We want single payer.

Revenue neutral? Washington speak for impossible.

Accounting tricks to defray real and necessary health care for all of us. If you want to consider the cost of a single payer system, and you are honest ( eliminating all our politicos ) you must factor in the horrific cost of our current for-profit system that delivers only the 36th best health care in the industrialised world…...

I would imagine that , using those figures, including the bankruptcies, loss of homes and jobs as well, single payer is a bargain.