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"The insurance company later rejected all bills from Boca Community, claiming it is an 'out-of-network' hospital. I quit Memorial the day I learned they rejected the claims and stuck us with the $25,000 bill," Mahoney said.
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Sponsored by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee
Eighty-two percent of Americans think the U.S. healthcare system should be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt (Commonwealth Fund, Aug. 7, 2008). America's nurses know that only single-payer, improved and expanded Medicare for all will fix our broken system and the tragedy of our devastated families. HR 676, by U.S. Rep John Conyers, is the most comprehensive, cost effective way to achieve guaranteed healthcare for all.
For more information, or to contact this patient: Liz Jacobs, RN 510/273-2232.
Car insurance—you loathe to pay more for it than necessary, and if you’re like most people, you even hate to think about it longer than necessary.
With both of those facts in mind, we’ll make this post as short and practical as possible.
SMART WAYS TO SAVE ON CAR INSURANCE
Raise your deductibles (to the highest level you can afford).
The deductible is the amount you agree to pay, in the event you file a claim, before your insurer starts paying. There are usually two deductibles: one for collision coverage (for damage from accidents) and one for comprehensive coverage (for damage to your car that’s not the result of a car accident, i.e., theft, vandalism, etc.).
Put down the Yellow Pages and go online.
Cheap online car insurance is just a few clicks away. Sites like InsureMe.com and Bankrate.com make it easy to get quotes from multiple insurers. Such sites make comparison shopping much easier.
Maintain a squeaky clean credit rating and driving record.
Did you know that your credit history is one the biggest factors in determining your auto insurance premium? Well it is! So it pays to pay your credit card and other bills. It also goes without saying that insurers will ding you not for only accidents, but also for any moving violations, including speeding tickets.
Combine policies under one insurer.
Do you have other types of insurance? Try getting a quote for all of them under one insurer. Most them offer generous multi-policy discounts.
If you are interested in reading more about auto insurance, just click over to the InsureMe Insurance Resource Center.
My Congressman, Jerry Nadler, on the other hand, has access to the Federal Employee health Benefits Plan (FEHBP).If he selected the same insurance as I have, he would pay $206.44 per month and the taxpayers would subsidize him to the tune of $314.25.
I urge you to go to this link, click your state and see what your Congressperson is paying and then compare it to what you pay. I'll tell you in advance, you won't like what you find. The sickening unfairness of our Alice in Wonderland political system is breathtaking in the extreme. When will the American people refuse to stop subsidizing these monsters? And by the way, I'm not accusing Nadler of being a monster. He happens to be a co-sponsor of HR676, but I do think he should renounce his taxpayer subsidized health coverage until his constituents receive exactly what he has.
I live in one of the few so-called merciful states. We have community rating in New York. This means the scum for-profit insurers must sell insurance to everyone, even people like me with dreaded pre-existing conditions. The insurance industry and John McCain blames the "so-called uninsurables", people like me, for causing premiums to increase. Shame on me for having a pre-exisiting condition. John McCain and the insurance industry only wants healthy people to have access to health insurance.
I'm not the only casualty. Our government and the insurance industry feeds on the most vulnerable among us.
Children for example. Do you know about the tragedy playing out in Hawaii under a Republican governor?
Of course families are dropping private coverage. It is unaffordable!
Hawaii is dropping the only state universal child health care program in the country just seven months after it launched.
Gov. Linda Lingle's administration cited budget shortfalls and other available health care options for eliminating funding for the program. A state official said families were dropping private coverage so their children would be eligible for the subsidized plan.
Many senior citizens in the richest formerly richest country on the planet, stop taking their medications when they hit the awful doughnut hole.
For many older Americans, this is a bitter time of year with a deceptively sweet name: the "doughnut hole."
It's not a treat from the local bakery, but rather a coverage gap in the three-year-old Medicare Part D drug program. When Part D was first designed as a way to help elderly patients pay for their prescription drugs, the only way the federal government could afford it was to impose a yearly limit on what it would cover for each member. So once seniors consume drugs up to that threshold—it is $2,510 in 2008—they fall into the doughnut hole. They then have to pay fully out of pocket for their drugs until the end of the year, or until they're eligible for catastrophic coverage, whichever comes first.
The doughnut hole has been a source of angst ever since Part D began in 2004. Now we know why: One way seniors deal with being in the hole is to stop taking their drugs.
We're facing healthcare Armageddon. For me, I'll face down the rapacious insurance company (I have no choice) and take the path that most Americans are forced into. I'm going to drastically raise my co-pays and deductible to a point where my monthly premium will drop enough to make it nominally "affordable".
It's not affordable. It will never be affordable, until we banish from the face of the earth the parasitic middleman who devours 31% of our precious healthcare dollars.
Even worse, it's not acceptable. It's not acceptable that American citizens now view healthcare as a luxury. It's not acceptable that only the rich can access healthcare.