I don’t know what the cheapest insurance plans will cover, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that most people are so saddled with debt that they will not be able to afford the insurance they will be mandated to buy.

The penalty for not buying insurance in the Baucus bill is $1,500. Is that assessed on a monthly or yearly basis? If monthly, the yearly penalty would be $18,000. The higher number looks like a one-way ticket to bankruptcy for millions of people.

Next question: Can the penalty for violating the mandate be discharged in bankruptcy?

Do any of the bills criminalize a failure to pay the penalty, or is a plan to do so in the works to amend the statute after Obama signs it into law?

Although people can’t be excluded for preexisting conditions or terminated for expensive treatments, are there any limitations in the bills that would prevent insurance companies from charging higher and unaffordable rates for preexisting conditions and increasing rates for expensive treatments so they become unaffordable? If not, the “reform” of these two malevolent practices will be illusory without a much cheaper public option which the Baucus bill is designed to prevent.

What about long-term nursing care? My dad needed it for six years (Alzheimers) and my mother needed it for seven years (stroke). Their care cost a little over $1 million in a privately owned nursing home (the state facility was a disgrace) and, although I paid it, I was unable to recover financially and a traumatic injury my wife suffered in a 30-foot fall that cost her her job and our health insurance took us down forcing us to declare bankruptcy. I don’t believe any of these bills covers LT nursing home care.

How, if at all, are the moribund economy and continuing job losses considered in these bills?

Finally, it seems to me that the slow motion train wreck we’re watching is doomed because it’s focused on protecting insurance company and Big PhRMA profits instead of improving health care and making it accessible to all. A fundamental question is at the crux of the reform issue; namely, which is more important — health or corporate profits? We can’t have both and Baucus has been proving that for the past six months. His piece-of-crap bill is the icing on the cake.

This is why single payer is the only way to go and, depending on the answers to my questions I would rather Congress start over with a single payer proposal and put it to a vote without all the political graft and gamesmanship dedicated to concealing and protecting corporate agendas.

And, we need to get out of Afghanistan and Iraq NOW!

But then, that was in the early sixties, well-before anyone knew Reagan as anything other than a crappy actor, well before greed overtook and overwhelmed the consciousness of a nation which once offered hope ahead of profit.

Wonderful.

Fired up? Ready to go?

I’ve been mis-diagnosed in the past with rheumatoid arthritis (it wasn’t, it was Lyme’s Disease) and can’t get into anything resembling actual insurance coverage for myself. All I can get is catastrophic care at $900/month for myself, plus I pay 35% of the total costs. My family can get reasonable coverage with a $1,000 deductible and a $35 copay for $800/month.

To meet the Baucus Bill’s coverage requirements, I’m out a total of $1,700/month IF NO ONE GETS SICK OR HURT. That means my total annual costs could be “limited” to $32,300 under the Baucus Bill. Is it any wonder that I’ll be opting to pay the penalty instead of getting coverage if this bill is passed as it currently stands, and that I view it as not only NOT reform, but a TAX INCREASE, because Bad Max & his buddies in the Health Insurance Coalition can’t pass actual reform or provide a public option.

MEDICARE FOR ALL or NO MANDATE!

NAVDOC3rdMAR, please correct me if I’ve got it wrong.

iow, is it absolutely necessary to even have the second bill? Can’t the Senate just vote on the HELP version?