Comments about ‘Letter: The health care answer is not 'Obamacare', it is employers’

Mr. Hubbell fails to recognize a main part of the Affordable Health Care Act. The health care insurance provided by employers will still exist. Under the AHCA, his wife would still have had Select Health and all the coverage it gave. The AHCA works to ensure that all people have insurance, either through employers or other sources. It makes sure that pre-existing conditions are covered, and that children can have coverage on their parents' policies while they are in school and/or establishing themselves in the workforce. It works to ensure that everyone has coverage, at a fair price. That's a heck of a lot better than just giving people vouchers, and making them find their own insurance.

"The answer is not to force a program on everyone, but to teach companies that if you treat your employees with fairness you will received benefits 10 fold." Now if we could just get all employers to go to Sunday School and sacrafice their profits for the good of their employees we'd have this licked. Actually, Mr. Hubbell does highlight the problem with having employment as the vehicle for health care access. His solution is simply the one extreme to a functiong health care access problem. The other possiblity..get employers out of the health care business..single payer.

Why should my employer be in the health care coverage business at all? Why is it my employer's responsibility to provide health benefits for my family?

Single payer. Most companies don't give a hoot about the well being of their employees. Resources like "people" are always replaceable, especially with high unemployment.

What short memories liberals have. They "forgot" that wage controls by FDR caused employers to offer "benefits" to keep valued employees. Those employees couldn't be given a raise, but another employer could offer a better salary.

Government interfered in the private sector and now we're all paying the price.

Large companies were able to offer lower cost health care because they, themselves, self-insured everything except major medical. People got used to paying 10% or less of the real cost of visiting the doctor. They started to think that a visit should be free or very low cost.

Government caused that. Now the government wants 18% of our money to spend on pork barrel projects. They tell us that they will provide health care - just like they promised each of us a comfortable retirement if we just trusted them with 15% of our income during our entire working lives.

Now they tell us that they spent the Social Security funds - but not to worry, they gave us a worthless I.O.U. in return.

How foolish do they think we are? Only the very foolish would trust the government with their health.

First, Mr. Hubbell, my condolences on the loss of your wife.

Nothing in the ACA would have changed the coverage you or your wife received in the past year.

What the ACA _would_ do is make sure that no other family going through what you've just been through would have do go through it without health insurance.

I am retired and my Part D Medicare insurance is provided through United Health Care's Select plan. It is absolutely excellent. I have no monthly premium.

When I signed up, I and other seniors at the meeting asked how there could be a zero premium. The nice man explained that we had already paid our premiums through years of paying or Medicare taxes. The government is now paying them for us.

What about the $90 we had been paying for the same insurance to Blue Cross?

The nice man explained that was what is called a "management fee." Pure profit. A colossal rip-off, in other words.

My coverage (and yours) from Select is just a sample of what we can expect from ACA.

It's a whole lot better than continuing to feed the cash registers of greedy insurance companies.

Obamacare is much in the news lately, but I do not feel it is the answer to the medical question. The answer, I feel, is single payer health coverage. Why should your employer have anything to do with your health coverage? Human beings need health care, not employers. The situation described here could and does easily play out much worse, with denied coverage, no insurance to begin with, you name it. Cases where it goes well seem rare these days. We should all have coverage, for which we should all pay, that sees us first as a human being and doesn't care about income or pre existing conditions.

When my son broke his leg and required two surgeries, it took me 8 months of weekly phone calls to get Select Med to honor their obligation. Every phone call began with "I'm not showing any information on my screen" and ended with "there was a coding error."

I'm not impressed.

So, what will happen when President Romney kills Obamacare? What will he replace it with? Romneycare? How precious. I wonder what Staples, one of Romney's success stories, will do for its employees, since 40,000 of the 90,000 are part-timers. Will Staples provide health insurance for those 40,000? Do 747s have kick-stands?

What a silly letter. Give us 20 years and maybe we'll finally figure out that all we had to do was copy any of 30 health-care systems out there, and any of them would cut our costs in half, cover all citizens, and increase the overall quality of our health care. We don't need to reinvent the wheel, people.

Many of you seemed to miss the point. the answer is Employers who care about their employees. they are around and if you as employees show them what they get when they treat you right they will learn or go out of business. Its not about sending them to Sunday School it is about changing your attitude and thinking of ways that you can help the company grow. Company grows you benefit bottom line. Sure the owners profit but what is wrong with that after all they took the risk to start the business. this Union/Democrat attitude that you deserve to make as much as the owners is what destroyed the auto makers and put us in the mess we are now.

Many say they don't want the companies involved with their health care. You think having the Government involved will be better??? My retirement is much more secure through my company plan than through Social security.

Mr. Hubbell, sincere condolences on your wife's passing.
Unfortunately, you've been lied to. You've been lied to over and over, by partisans seeking political advantage. Your letter shows your commendable gratitude for the care your wife received, but also shows that you have no idea what the actual provisions of the ACA are, or what government run health care actually does.
My parents are in a government-run health care program. It's called Medicare, and they routinely receive terrific care; they're always talking about how happy they are with it, especially recently, as my mother has been dealing with a serious illness.
But the ACA has all the advantages of the care your wife experienced, with none of the disadvantages you describe. Please understand that. The ACA is not a perfect answer, but it's very good.

Does your employer need to be your nanny? No, and neither should the government! The government should make a few limited rules, such as requiring providers to cover basic healthcare for everyone, and limit your out of pocket costs to a reasonable percentage of your income, while requiring everyone to pay something for their healthcare. Tax breaks and other policies should encourage healthy lifestyles, health savings accounts, that employers could even participate in, and provider efficiency and coverage, but nanny state ideas need to end. Life isn't fair, and the nations governemtn shouldn't be expected to go into debt trying to offer top shelf healthcare for everyone!

Employers are going to willingly offer health insurance? Riiiiiight. That would cut into profits and executive bonuses. Those are much more valuable than employee health. It's why companies like walmart, scheels, and others only hire part time except for management. They don't have to provide insurance.

So Mr. Richards what has anyone on this thread said that would indicate that they have forgotten how employer sponsored health insurance started? Secondly, what government has promised to provide us health care? Certainly not this one. Thirdly where did you come up with the idea that the government promised that social security would provide someone a "comfortable" retirement? Social Security has always been and will always be a saftey net, not a hammock.

one old man
Ogden, UT

You may not be paying anything for your part D medical insurance, but I am.
Do you actually think it is the government that is paying for your medical insurance?

I appreciate the writer's situation and experience, but I think he and others need to learn more about health care reform around the world to see how it's worked for other countries and why it's saving costs. I talked to a man from Manitoba today who loves the system, and he's also lived in the UK, where he loved their system too. Read "The Healing of America" and learn about health care around the world before dogmatically asserting that America's current system is the only answer.

Mr. Hubbell,

My condolences for your wife. I too work at Stampin' Up (for the record, i'm here to speak for myself and do not represent the company), and I unfortunately did not have the chance to know your wife. But I do understand your struggle. See, my wife passed away last year of Cancer as well. Breast Cancer to be exact. While I will always be grateful to my company for providing us with the healthcare coverage that allowed her and our 3 beautiful children to spend more time with her, I understand not everyone has been that lucky.

Often times while going over our medical bills with my wife, we would be grateful at how much the insurance company covered us. We were very grateful for the company I work for which provided this healthcare for us and allowed us to continue living our lives as 'normal' as possible. Often times, while receiving chemo, we would discuss about the unfortunate people that would never have that chance due to no insurance coverage. We would often get scared of the $ limit there was on our insurance and what we would do if we ran out.

Post 2/2 - We would often wonder what would happen if I needed to change jobs, how would she be covered with a new insurance company given her pre-existing condition - and dreaded the thought of others having to suffer or even worry about that. You see, me and my wife (and you and your wife) were lucky! We didn't fall into that category that millions of others do. I am grateful (and my wife was too, before passing) for the Affordable Health Care Act - because to us, it meant the option to continue fighting without having to worry about those worries others have faced. It meant giving hope and life to other families going through what we were going through. It meant, never being a 'slave' owned by a company simply because my of my wife's illness. It meant that we could be covered without worrying of running out of coverage. It helped enforce the belief that EVERY LIFE is precious, not just that of my wife. Forever I will be grateful to my company for giving us the opportunity of more time with my wife, and grateful for the AHCA giving the same chance to others.