OT: Health Care Bill ** You Can't Get Blood Out of a Turnip

[Guest guest]

I think we the people have to realize that the " safety net " is ever shrinking

whether it be provided by the government or by corporations.

 

When I started working at my present employer 27 years ago, the employment

benefits included retirement payments on the order of 30% of my salary after 30

years or age 55, whichever came first. That sounded good. If that were in place

today, I would be looking at around 60k annually.

 

6 months before I turned 40 (I started at age 22), they changed the plan, if you

were over 40 and had 15 years of service, you got to keep that plan but

otherwise you got this new plan, which was a lump sum plan or you could get an

annuity out of it that basically amounted to about 1000/month.

 

A couple of years ago, right before congress voted to prevent companies from

gutting their pensions, same company stopped pensions altogether and put

everyone on a 401k plan where they contribute between 1-4% of base salary,

depending on which prior plan you were in. Newbies get 1%, my group gets 1.5%

and the oldies get 3-4% (to make up for what they aren't getting because they

don't have time to save more before retirement).

 

Ok, so no more pension.

 

At the same time, we've gone from health insurance 80/20 plan fully funded by

the corporation to following the failed Clinton healthcare overhaul which

started the idea that employees should contribute towards their health insurance

we went to an employee share of the 80/20 plan which ran around $220/month or

more if you chose an HMO with no or fixed copays - now we have the cadillac

plan, an 80/20 plan with no deductible for in network and $1800/person out of

network deductible for $520/month, the mid range 70/30 plan with $1800/person

deductible in network and $1800/person deductible out of network for $350/month

and the low cost 60/40 plan with $3600 deductible/family in or out of network

for $150/month. There is also an HMO presently but I didn't consider it, it was

more than the midrange plan.

 

On retirement, the company will offer you the same plans it offers it employees

and you pay full cost. The cheapest 60/40 plan is $1200/month for two adults.

 

Ok so pension gone and now must pay for medical insurance.

 

Private industry has led the charge, and here in NJ (with its very high taxes)

now public service is starting to cut its benefits too. We owe the pension

system 64 billion if I recall it correctly, I doubt we will come up with that so

the gov't will find a way to gut those benefits. People who thought they would

get a pension won't or will get much less, sound familiar? They just haven't

become conscious of this yet. As I see it, the public service pensions look

pretty good, police offers retiring with pensions of $75K - not bad. But the

corporate reality will move in as the turnip gets squeezed.

 

I would not expect there to be much in the way of benefits in another decade or

two.

 

Ultimately people who learn to look out for themselves are the ones who will be

ok, partly that means planning ahead, partly that means figuring out how to keep

themselves healthy (i.e. don't go to the grocery store).

 

But there are things you can't foresee, 5 years ago I became extremely ill after

living a very healthy lifestyle. It took 3.5 years to figure out we had a water

intrusion problem in a crawl space and there was a particular mold biotoxin I

was not detoxifying. That little dip cost me about $135K out of pocket and about

5 years of my life, not because I was in the hospital, but because allopathic

medicine tested me and said I was fine, so off I went to the out-of-network

functional medicine people who never figured it out either (but had tests that

let me figure out how to compensate for what was not happening correctly in my

body) - they did help keep me alive long enough that I could figure it out. I

consider myself pretty smart, so imagine how many people out there haven't

figured it out. Its a specialty called environmental medicine which the

allopathic community derides. But it has answers and by and large most insurance

does not cover any of it because it isn't profitting big pharma.

 

If I look at the health care bill, it is feeding a broken system that treats

symptoms and not root cause. It continues a corporate profit system. What we

need is not an insurance for all bill, what we need is medical care that makes

sense. If we run out of doctors, that may be a good thing, people will be forced

to learn about how to take care of themselves - the power will return to the

people, which is where it should be. And if I have to buy insurance, maybe the

plan I'll buy is one for teaching me how to stay healthy with very little in the

way of benefits - maybe we should start that corporation now? It could be a

non-profit, if you join you have " coverage " .

 

Wishing everyone a wonderful morning, Jackie