Unless the health care overhaul deals with the cost of healthcare, this is what you can expect your taxes to escalate each year — times the factor that healthcare represents of GDP — currently around 16% — or 7.8% average increase times its GDP proportion or — 1.67% points of increase per year!

And here is the cost data and its citation:
According to a new analysis, medical expenses on a per member per month (PMPM) basis have escalated at 7.8% per year for the past six years.
Source: “Medical Expense Trend Stabilized,” Mark Farrah Associates (MFA), June 25, 2009, http://www.markfarrah.com/healthcarebs.asp?article=63

As to private insurance being “driven out of buisness”, that is pure hogwash and fearmongering designed specifically to re-enforce the stranglehold of private, non-competative insurance. What WILL happen, is that the insurance companies will for the first time be forced into a competitative market. If they can’t compete then that is just the rules of free-market which conservatives are always applauding. You would think they could get their stories straight once and stick to it. Insurance should have been happy and satisfied making 500% profit margins rather than the 1000% profit margins they enjoy now. It is pure greed at the expense of America’s health that we are fighting against and it is that greed that conservatives are trying to conserve. Insurance rationing healthcare is already a fact of life, insurance will give you a choice of doctors alright, if you’re lucky you get 2 or 3 doctors to choose from…. boy what a choice. And above all, after paying your insurance companuy hundreds ofthousands of dollars they LOVE to tell you on the operating table that they aren’t going to pay a dime. SOME system conservatives are defending.

Healthcare coverage is much more than $7500 a year and again minimizing the problem comes to the fore-front. Consevatives are engaged in minimizing and/or eliminating un-insured statistics thinking that it perfectly fine that 5 million have no coverage and their lives are destroyed because they happen to get sick. The actual number is probably HIGHER than 50 million un-insured because the arguement of “illegals” being counted in this number is false. First, no illegal is going to register for fear of deportation so the inclusion or minimization of the un-insured number due toillegal aliens is a lie. Second, there has been no acknowledgment of the fact that up to 80% of the INSURED, have inadequate insurance. This isn’t just about the un-insured but about 80-85% of the entire population of America. Of course a majority are satisfied with their coverage because their coverage has not been tested. Test that “insurance” and that satisfaction number drops like a lead ballon.

Why not try to address the issue of healthcare with integrity and honesty and without the need to scare the H*** out of people? It weould be refreshing for once.

AmeriGas offers employees compensation for their labor. That compensation includes wages plus benefits. It is now saying that if employees don’t get a particular medical test, they will lose compensation worth about $15,000. Maybe people would rather skip the tests, take half that money and buy their own health insurance policies.

What is to stop AmeriaGas from saying that people who don’t drive the proper car, or eat the groceries provided by the company, or who drink any alcohol, or eat salt or eat sugar, or fail to sleep 8 hours each night, or participate in high injury sports, or who get sexually transmitted diseases will also lose $15,000 in compensation?

If people fail to condemn this kind of policy, and if ObamaCare rewards this behavior and imitates it in a public plan that is successful in destroying private medical care, what is to prevent the government from doing the same thing?

Businesses that pay higher wages in lieu of providing health insurance also get the great employees you describe.

Who is forcing people to work at Amerigas?

I know that I would be looking into finding a new employer, so they would be losing at least one “GREAT” employee, and I am sure others would follow. That is what competition is all about, and why my employer offers good health care and not Bob’s fly-by-night mandatory two year check-up insurance.

The ethical question is whether the company can also force people to accept medical treatments they don’t want as a condition of keeping their job or their insurance? If an employee’s wife’s cholesterol is high, can the company force her to take cholesterol lowering drugs or loose the $15,000 in income represented by the health insurance policy? Can it do this even if her CRP is low?

These requirements have little to do with remaining healthy. What they really are is a formula for wasting money. Should a woman who has had a hysterectomy have to get a Pap smear? Why should someone of normal weight with no symptoms have to have blood sugar tested? Does a home test that saves money count?

A far easier and less ethically challenged would be for AmeriGas to stick to filling propane tanks and let its employees manage their health responsibly by setting them up with a well designed policy linked to a health savings account.