Health Or Wealth? What's The Mission Of Our Health Care System?
Switching to a nonprofit system in Maine would put the focus back on care.
By PHILIP CAPER, JOE LENDVAI and JULIE PEASEThere has been a great deal of discussion recently about health care reform in America and in Maine. Many Republicans want to repeal last year's federal health care reform law, and most Democrats want to implement and improve it..
Switching to a nonprofit system in Maine would put the focus back on care.
By PHILIP CAPER, JOE LENDVAI and JULIE PEASE
Single-Payer Feasibility Study Requested
A resolve requiring the Legislature to update a single-payer feasibility study is headed for the Insurance and Financial Services Committee on Wednesday.
The resolve’s sponsor, Rep. Paulette Beaudoin, D-Biddeford, said she introduced LD 57 to assess the viability of single-payer health care in Maine.
The legislation, which is contingent on $60,000 in outside funding, would update a study conducted by Mathematica Policy Research in 2002.
6February 5, 2011, 9:41 AM
Are You Paying Too Little in Taxes?
By YOU'RE THE BOSS EDITORS
In a provocative article in the latest issue of Inc. magazine, Max Chafkin takes a look at the relationship between taxes and entrepreneurship. For the piece, Mr. Chafkin spent two weeks in Norway, which ranks higher than the United States in effective income tax rates and has a 1.1 percent wealth tax — but also has more entrepreneurs per capita and higher rates of start-up creation. The case of Norway, Mr. Chafkin writes, should give us pause: “What if we have been wrong about taxes?”
Hatch Says Kagan Should Forgo Participation In Health Care Case
WASHINGTON — Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, an opponent of the recently enacted health care overhaul, says Justice Elena Kagan should not take part in the widely expected Supreme Court consideration of the new law.
Hatch’s call is part of the broad legal and political maneuvering on both sides for the most favorable conditions surrounding court review of President Obama’s signature domestic policy accomplishment.
Health Care in Mexico ... and in the U.S.
To the Editor:
Re “Mexico Struggles to Realize the Promise of Universal Health Care” (news article, Jan. 30):
Now finalizing six years of effort, by September Mexico will have managed to enroll 51 million poor people in a government-sponsored health insurance program, effectively creating a universal health plan. As a result, lives have already been saved, cancers treated, cataracts removed, H.I.V. medicated and babies cared for.
Speaker John Boehner, Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Representative Paul Ryan and all your Republican comrades, so eager to deny uninsured Americans decent health care: if our far less affluent neighbors to the south can afford health care for all, why can’t the most affluent nation in the world?
Arthur L. Yeager
Edison, N.J., Jan. 30, 2011
Edison, N.J., Jan. 30, 2011
Uncertainty over health reform costing businesses
Posted Feb. 04, 2011, at 7:25 p.m.
The federal health care reform saga continues. A Florida judge now has ruled the individual mandate unconstitutional in the very lawsuit Maine joined under the direction of its attorney general, William Schneider. As an insurance broker and consultant, I hope for a quick path to the U.S. Supreme Court and a final decision. The uncertainty is becoming an enormous burden for Maine businesses.
I’ll leave the argument for or against the law for the politicians, but I will say that the current uncertainty is becoming a real problem. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to work with clients and ask them to make decisions in the midst of uncertainty. We all need to realize that businesses are incurring costs today that are directly related to this law.
With Health Care Reform, Income Swings May Mean Loss of Coverage
By Amanda GardnerHealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Feb. 3 (HealthDay News) -- Under the new Affordable Care Act, the health reform package signed into law by President Barack Obama last March, millions of Americans whose income fluctuates during the year may lose health insurance for periods of time as their eligibility for different programs changes.MedicineAffairs estimated that as many as 28 million U.S. adults might "churn" in and out of health insurance programs during the course of a year, sometimes losing coverage more than once.
I am not a supporter of the health care reform signed into law by President Obama. However my reasons, like those of most progressives, does not mean that I support the ill motivations of the Republican Party. The so called moderate democrats in Congress were able to force the rest of their party to compromise so much in favor of the private insurance companies that the final result was no longer worth of any progressive support. What the Republicans want is a continuation of the olygopolistic control and abuse by the private insurers, and the democrats were left in the middle, with little support from either side.
ReplyDeleteThe main problem with the approved health reform is that it still retains most of the inefficiencies of the old system, the high public costs and potential for abuse and loopholes for private insurers to deny coverage to those who are seen as unprofitable. Furthermore, there is one thing I agree with the Republicans in this matter--the fact that a mandate by the government to each individual to buy insurance from a private seller is unconstitutional. To claim that the refusal to buy health insurance constitues a form of interference of interstate commerce, subject to financial penalties, is a big stretch of the interpretation of the law. Such form of interpretation of the law invades our freedom to decide how to spend our resources.