Posted on 09/21/2016 12:45:46 PM PDT by thirst4truth
Oregon's Senator Jeff Merkley Dear Diana,
Thank you for contacting me to express your concerns about the rising cost of health insurance premiums in Oregon. I appreciate hearing from you and having the opportunity to share my perspective.
I believe the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a vast improvement over the system we had before. Even with higher premiums in 2017 than during the first three years of the marketplace, premiums continue to rise at an historically low rate, far below where they were predicted to be if the pre-ACA trend of premium increases had continued. Millions of Americans are accessing better coverage at a lower cost than they would have received without the ACA.
However, I recognize that many Oregonians are worried about steep premium increases, even with marketplace subsidies. The vision of the ACA was to allow customers to shop in a competitive marketplace where insurance carriers would offer high-quality plans at an affordable price point. I believe it is time for us to restart the conversation on adding a public option to provide Oregonians with more choices, hold insurance companies accountable, and keep costs down.
Please know I will continue to work with my colleagues to address ongoing concerns with the ACA and to keep the law moving in the right direction, including consideration of a public option. Constituent feedback, like yours, is vital to this process and I thank you again for sharing your thoughts with me.
All my best,
Jeffrey A. Merkley United States Senator
'Big Insurance' screwing the little guy.
Bullcrap, GOVERNMENT is and always will be the problem.
Senator Merkin Muffley.
It should have read:
“Dear Citizen,
What are you bitching about?
The Chocolate Ration was INCREASED from 30 grams, to 25 grams, and is a vast improvement over the system we had before.
Please know that I don’t give a damn what you Prols think, and that I have no intention to work with my colleagues to address ongoing concerns with the ACA.
Please report to your nearest Democratic Party rReducation Camp as soon as possible.”
Single payer works great if you’re healthy. You just pay an extra 10-15% in Fed taxes and, if you get sick, you go to your local clinic, see the doctor that’s assigned to you and hope he/she can quickly diagnose you. Voila! For an extra 10-15% in Fed taxes, you don’t have to pay for a $15 office visit. But be worried if you need more than routine medical care. Doctors are fined if they refer too many patients to specialists, in any given month. And you DO NOT have the option of choosing and going to the doctors you want. There are many more drawbacks to Socialized Medicine.....if a woman has trouble getting pregnant, she will be allowed IVF, resulting in one pregnancy. No more than one.....that’s not included. If you need to be hospitalized and there are no more beds in the Ward (yes, I said WARD), you will be sleeping in the hallway. I WISH those who are determined to have single payer, would have to live under it’s restrictions for one year. I pray that we can get back to patient centered health care, where the patient again has control over their care and from whom they receive that care.
P.S. I forgot to mention in my main letter that we esteemed senators have our own health care plan. So, good luck and you’d can always save up for those premiums by sending me fewer pieces of mail.
Best wishes, Senator Jeffey
The American people will always have faith in “single payer” as they call it.
What jumps out at me is ... comparing what is to what will be. So, no matter that Obama promised lower premiums if Ocare was enacted, be “grateful” that Ocare is costing less than our “projections” of future cost.
What bull-loney! This is the global warming argument. Compare what is happening now to what we are “projecting” to happen in 50 years. You must spend for this because the costs you are incurring are less than we “project” if you don’t pay.
If that’s the case, it is because they have never had to live under the Government deciding who will get healthcare and how much healthcare they will get. Oh, and single payer doesn’t cover elderly nursing home care either.
The average profit margin for an health insurance company is 5%. Assume that we go to single payer, does anyone in their right mind believe that government incompetence, and inefficiency, will be less than 5%? NOT A CHANCE!
It’s amazing how brazenly they lie.
I’am righteously ashamed that the idiot libs in Portland and
Eugene voted this imbecile, idiot into office. He has the IQ of a dry brick and displays this on a daily basis. He is not representative of rural Oregon!!
The scary thing is that some people will believe this bull.......
Congress needs term limits and elimination of their special perks. The system was designed for citizen politicians serving on somewhat of a rotating basis. In the absence of term limits, it would help if more states had and exercised recall and/or impeachment procedures.
My sympathies as there are a lot of great people out in the rural areas.
Hope the Ducks fare better—going for the 2-points after every TD sure helped the local team win last Saturday.
“The average profit margin for an health insurance company is 5%. Assume that we go to single payer, does anyone in their right mind believe that government incompetence, and inefficiency, will be less than 5%? NOT A CHANCE!”
We paved the way for all of this when we decoupled the patient from the process of paying for his or her medical care. Once you take the consumer out of the loop, it’s Katy bar the door for the wholesale corruption and collusion between the government, the providers, the drug companies and device mfrs, and the insurance companies. Now they all point fingers at eachother but none of us really knows who’s the biggest crook of the lot! Just watch this cluster f-uk going on with Heather Bresh of Milan Pharmaceuticals and the Congress. She’s a crook, but she’s being “grilled” by a bunch of self-serving idiots. This bitch and her $19 million salary needs to be behind bars, but instead these worthess turds in The Congress pontificate, then go home and nothing is done!
We could put a bunch of skid row bums in all the seats in the Congress and it would be an improvement.
Yea, in other words they support something that exists only in their uninformed minds.
We here in E. Washington have the equally brain dead Sen. Patty Murray :-(
Ah, Oregon Rancher, you are burdened with Merkley and Widen foisted on you by the I-5 crowd. North of you we have similar millstones Murray and Cantwell brought to us by Seattle and environs, cities also mainly along I-5. Must be something about that damn highway.
It is Drug Addicted Public Servants like this that made me come up with the PEACE ACT:
The Public Employee Affordable Care Enrollment Act.
All Persons that can be classified as a “Public Employee” or a “Retired Public Employee”, SHALL purchase their Own Personal and Family Health Insurance from the Affordable Care Act Exchange in the State they Legally Reside.
The Senator does not address the fact that Docotrs are closing offices, consolidating offices surgery center are folding up, its harder to get prompt appointment and on and on. My Doctor is not that old yet but you can tell she is getting to the point of thinking of moving on. She told me the ACA paper work is out of hand.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.