Posted on 10/09/2010 7:24:54 AM PDT by nmh
As millions of hardworking Americans struggle to make ends meet, Senate staffers will participate next week in a two-day orgy of back massages, organic food tastings and milk mustache photos.
It's all part of a health fair for the staffers, who enjoy some of the best health care in the country.
Not only will they get health screenings, they'll also find out if their iPods are too loud.
Neither the Senate's Education and Training Office nor the Senate sergeant-at-arms, which oversees the office, would say which vendors are providing the services or how much the health fair will cost taxpayers.
But there will be no shortage of vendors providing screenings for visual acuity, chiropractic health, bone density, glaucoma, PSA levels, cholesterol levels and hearing.
The Senate staffers also will be treated to seated massages, herbal teas, polarity therapy, low-fat cheese samples and organic foods. A pharmacist and health coach will be available to speak to fairgoers about their medications, nutrition and healthy lifestyle questions.
Fairgoers can test themselves with brain games and bring their MP3 players to be tested for decibel levels.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Senate staffers enrolled in the program don't have waiting periods or coverage limitations on pre-existing conditions.
Hmmmmm .... I wonder how much that is COSTING YOU?
Ours is NOT.
In fact, we have NO health care right now.
That's right. NO HEALTH CARE AT ALL.
It's all our of pocket expense.
And yet our TAXES pay for this?
I think you mean no health insurance. If you’re going to the doctor, buying medications, minding your diet and exercise, etc., you have health care.
The Zero Administration has got everyone equating “health care” with “health care somebody else pays for,” but we shouldn’t buy into that.
We have a start up business going on and have no health insurance. That is a better way to put it. We certainly don't want some GOVERNMENT plan. We also have to work out arrangements for people to work for us ... . People have NO IDEA how Obama care is affecting business.
The health care we have is what we DIRECTLY PAY for. Surprising when our kids get their physical etc. it varies between 1/3 to 1/2 the cost of what the insurance company would have been billed. Rush is right. Pay as you go is cheaper and more effective. We do not go to GOVERNMENT CLINICS. We stay with our regular providers where they all speak and comprehend English.
“he Zero Administration has got everyone equating “health care” with “health care somebody else pays for,” but we shouldn’t buy into that.”
Frankly, what we'd want is catastrophic health care insurance rather than what we had in the past. We have the same doctors we have had for years and pay LESS money for the proper care we need as we need it.
What we are looking for is health care sold across state lines and pooled accordingly - just like other insurance is. Then we'd be happy. We could play games with an address in another state ... but that would be unwise ... . Some people do that and hope for the best - pretend they live in state A while they live in state B to get cheaper coverage with a major carrier.
Thankfully we are in a position to get through all this. It just pisses me off that our government elite deprive my family and live high off the hog.
I agree with all you’ve said! The government has deliberately made health insurance expensive and disfunctional, so as to impose National Health Service on us - but not on themselves.
TERM LIMITS!!
At some point we will have our stuff over seas to keep what we earn. We may also move over there. We'll see how things work out ... . This is the thinking of other small and medium sized business owners. We refuse to work for the GOVERNMENT and have what we earn redistributed to people that don't do squat.
We are fortunate that we have family over seas that practice law there to help us ... protect our earnings. The GOVERNMENT health care in our state like others is a mess. Our state bylaw, doesn't allow other health care carriers to offer packages to suit our needs. It's either a private carrier or a GOVERNMENT clinic of some sort.
The laws in our state are set up to offer no choice. You cannot purchase catastropich health insurance with a respectable private carrier. All the "diversity" admittance in medical schools has taken its toll. It may "look" like America but APPEARANCE doesn't equal competence. It never has.
We need to get back to merit for admittance to medical school even if that hurts the RACIST views of our liberal utopians. We have people in place ONLY because of what they LOOK LIKE. Most are incompetent, can't speak English or comprehend it. I'll let you figure out what people I am talking about ... . There is no way in hell we want anything to do with people like that!
“TERM LIMITS!!”
Term limits is NOT the answer.
The answer is a knowledgeable base. People need to be ENGAGED in what is going on. There are some decent people that I wouldn’t mind being in place forever. It is PEOPLE who need to make it a point to KNOW what is going on.
As I mentioned, some states, like ours, do NOT allow private carriers to offer individual health care packages. All the private carriers in our state are jacking up the COST of health care they already offer to companies. Many companies are already encouraging people to go with “government” care.
Small and medium sized companies are being hit the hardest. Again, this precludes hiring with the rising health care costs and with taxes going up, it makes little sense for them to be in business. There is no point in working your tush off and paying the government your profits to redistribute to lazy, entitlement minded people. So we hold back and see what happens ... .
I'm hearing that from business owners and employees around here. My husband and I were on a kayak trip recently, and the guide said her employer had nearly had to fire her because of new health insurance requirements. She had a private insurance policy, but the state didn't consider it acceptable. Somehow she and the employer figured out a way around it so she could keep her job.
We circulate with other business owners and do the same ...
“I’m hearing that from business owners and employees around here. My husband and I were on a kayak trip recently, and the guide said her employer had nearly had to fire her because of new health insurance requirements. She had a private insurance policy, but the state didn’t consider it acceptable. Somehow she and the employer figured out a way around it so she could keep her job.”
It’s true! You have to be very careful how you go about keeping people and hiring people ... . We make “arrangements”. THIS is stopping the majority of companies of any size from hiring people.
What incenses people even more is this kind of stuff:
N.J. faces class-action lawsuit by immigrants denied FamilyCare in budget cuts
Published: Thursday, September 02, 2010, 5:30 PM Updated: Friday, September 03, 2010, 5:10 AM
NEWARK — Seton Hall Law School's Center for Social Justice filed a class action lawsuit today against New Jersey on behalf of low-income legal immigrants who have been denied state-funded Medicaid health insurance under the FamilyCare program due to recent budget cuts.
New Jersey discontinued Medicaid coverage for nearly 12,000 residents under FamilyCare between April and July because they had not been permanent residents for at least five years, according to the lawsuit.
...
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/09/nj_faces_class-action_lawsuit.html
Legal people that were born here have NO HEALTH CARE. There is this terrible “entitlement” mentality from new immigrants exasperated by misguided “social justice” wet behind the ear lawyers.
Health care is not a right. Without health insurance and being BORN here and LEGAL we still believe that health insurance is a product/service that needs to be PAID FOR. We do that. We don't expect OTHERS to pay for it other than in a pooled risk situation under an insurance policy and do not see it as RIGHT as these immigrants do.
There are PRIVATE organizations out there that handle these kinds of situations. One of them is Shriners Hospital in Philadelphia. Just a little bit of research would have pointed them out instead of this endless entitlement demanding through law that leaves out people that have been here far longer and doing without health insurance and in bad or worse shape economically.
Using immigration status or income level as a means to get health insurance only inflames people and makes them more anti-immigrant. Mush of our health care costs go to ILLEGAL IMMIGRNATS. Hospitals can NOT refuse a patient.
When illegals and others fail to pay for their health care, THIS jacks up YOUR RATE. It is mostly the ILLEGAL and the impoverished that don't make good on their medical bills. In NJ, hospitals in Trenton and Newark were shut down because they weren't being paid. I don't know if they reopened.
The hospitals tried everything at the time to stay open. An acquaintance told me that as a floor nurse, in a Newark hospital, felt compelled to resign. She eventually went back to school at night and changed fields. The hospital in order to keep costs down hired more "aids" and let them do the jobs of LP RN's.
This acquaintance was an LP RN and headed a floor in a Newark hospital. Newark is a war zone ... . She was horrified at the incompetence, inability to understand and comprehend English. They'd constantly misread charts, gave out wrong dosages of medication, forgot to dose a patient at the right time, amounts, right medicines and what frightened her more personally was their inability to properly dispose of syringes.
Most of the patients she dealt with had aids. When you use a needle on these patients, you have to be careful of disposal. She was constantly getting pricked by used needles because of improper disposal. She'd constantly correct them and it went in one ear and out the other, as she would tell me. After being pricked by a used needle, they'd monitor her for 6 months to see if she contracted aids. So she'd have to sweat it out for six months.
Eventually she determined it was too much of a risk for her to work in that environment, even though she LOVED babies, with "aides" that were increasingly incompetent and seemed to want to remain that way. Cost cutting through properly qualified people was disastrous. Competent people moved on.
One situation really got her mad. It was a teen mother who had given birth to a premature baby. She worked primarily with babies. She went home and her baby was left in the preemie ward. She happened to be on the floor when the teen mom and her siblings and mother came to view the preemie. She was outraged at their comments. They pointed to the CRACK baby WITH AIDS and said the HOSPITAL did this to THEIR BABY. They left and NEVER returned. The baby eventually died. Others live but are left unclaimed. This in a common occurrence. But this one she witnessed the hospital being blamed for what the "mother" did to her baby - drugs and aids.
Some good hearted people will take them home knowing their life might not be for long. Of course the bills for this are unpaid and the care is unappreciated. It was a pity that a good person left the profession. She had enough and dreamt about lawsuits implicating her. She knew eventually some group would nail who worked for some "legal social justice group" and she'd get dragged down in the law suit.
The hospital was using incompetent people to keep costs down due to, if you will constant cost over runs with no end in sight. If we don't get rid of this entitlement mentality, this will continue and destroy our health care system.
Correction:
Cost cutting through IMPROPERLY qualified people was disastrous.
North Carolina. I don’t know how they worked it; something to do with the business owner’s having more than one store.
I agree - “health care” is not a right, although caring for the sick, to the best of one’s ability, is a duty for Christians. We could have a medical care system, as well as an educational system, based on individual payment or private charity.
Please pardon my other typos - real life is calling me!
I understand - there’s always turmoil here, too!
If we really needed care, and in a catastrophic condition, we'd get our care from Shriners Hospital since my uncle was Potentate there. We know the people there. They know our family well. We've been very involved with the organization through charitable fund raisers. They are very helpful with our business venture as well.
THIS is where Christian charity SHOULD step in. It's so ideal ... . Ti could change hearts for the right place in eternity. I really have to run now .... I've enjoyed our dialog.
We were fine with their other requirements but ONE of them we flunked. At one time, we both smoked cigarettes. We no longer do but the requirement was that you never smoked cigarettes. The other requirements we were in line with. If something happened and we needed their help, we could be disqualified for lying about not smoking cigarettes. So we didn't bother to try and lie about that.
I really have to go! Take care.
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