SICK OF BEING POOR

It was only yesterday that I said, "There are people in this country who are really not in a position to save up anything.  Every penny they earn is necessary just to keep body and soul together."

It turns out that every penny they earn still isn't enough to keep body and soul together.  The Los Angeles Times tells us that the cost of health insurance for a family of four now exceeds the income of a full-time minimum wage worker.

The study by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Health Research Educational Trust, published each fall before open enrollment season begins, is considered the definitive survey of what coverage will cost workers.

This year the survey found that average annual premiums for family coverage grew more than 9% since last year to $10,880. A minimum wage worker earns $10,712 before taxes.

"What we are seeing is an unraveling of the way we finance healthcare in the United States," said William Custer, director for the Center for Health Services Research at George State University in Atlanta. "It is coming apart at the edges, and those edges are small business and low-wage workers. The levees are breaking."

According to Kaiser, the number of businesses offering health insurance to their workers continues to decline, with just three out of five businesses offering insurance to their workers. That's just 60% in 2005, down from 69% in 2000, the study found. The drop stems almost entirely from small businesses dropping coverage because of cost concerns.

LAdad readily admits that he doesn't like his job at UPS.  He goes to work at 2:00 am and gets all banged up and sore loading parcels onto trucks.  The reason he does it instead of seeking other work is because UPS offers full health coverage for our entire family.  My job offers no health insurance.

"We're in a new universe of healthcare coverage, where it is a commodity only for the wealthy," said Jerry Flanagan, with the Foundation for Taxpayers and Consumer Rights, a Santa Monica consumer rights group.

And yet people want me to believe that every other First World country on this planet is communist because their governments provide universal health care that is paid for through taxation.  And that if the U. S.  tried to follow suit we would end up bankrupt.

HT: Alas.

Comments

[kimj]

This issue just infuriates me.

Medical coverage is what finally put me back to work full time -- my husband's policy cost us $1,000 per month for our family (and that was the cheap plan). We finally took action after realizing that the HMO was worthless when you really had a health concern. Long story, but suffice it to say that medical care is way off the mark these days.

Now here's something to chew on: My daughter's pediatrician sent her to the emergency room believing she was having an appendicitis attack. She wasn't, thank God. The time in the ER and the diagnosis (no doctor until the very end, btw, just the Emergency Med techs and nurses) cost us (our co-pay) $480 (Mission Hospital, CA). One month later in Iowa, she was back in the ER with a different ailment -- the whole time with a doctor and a nurse, xrays inclusive, a lolly pop and multiple cups of coffee for mom and dad. Our Bill? $64 (Clark County Regional Hospital, IA).

Something is rotten in Denmark.

[Robert]

I think you hit the nail on the head with that last sentence. I have come to the conclusion that we Americans have been brainwashed on the issue of national healthcare. We actually believe that it is "normal" to have a system where 40 million of us are uninsured, and that national healthcare is the domain of communist countries. In those countries with functioning state healthcare, people pay large portions of their income as tax, but they receive, in return, healthcare, daycare and education for their children, maternity and paternity leave, and occasionally subsidized housing. Here, we also pay large amounts of our income as tax, and what do we receive? Hmmm...lots of military toys and the right to cheap gasoline for our SUV's. Governments do NOT "bankrupt" because of healthcare -- any idiot who comes up with that argument needs to look at Northern Europe. It's not a matter of not having the money -- it's a matter of choosing HOW and WHERE to spend it. And in this country, healthcare is at the bottom of congress' to-do list.