morepork wrote:Coco wrote:*eyeroll* Get off your liberal high horse mister.morepork wrote:Coco....many, many people are not "used" to speedy health care. The myth of high income supporting the health of the masses needs dispelling. State employers pick up the tab in the main and you should fucking know it.
State Employers? Really?
Directly from the NCSL website:
2/1/2017
All 50 states provide health insurance coverage for their state employees.
Most have done so for decades. However, the amount of coverage, who is eligible to enroll, and the portions paid by the state employer and by the individual worker always have varied from state to state.
In the past five years these state benefit plans have attracted much more attention among legislators, governors and policymakers. Often, this is because:
Rapidly rising commercial premiums are impacting state budgets;
State fiscal pressures are leading to more proposals to increase employee share of costs;
Co-payments and deductibles are on the rise in many places, separate from the established premiums.
A few general facts about state employee health plans, based on several national surveys: 1
State government employees covered by employer health insurance totaled 5,281,911 in 2013 (compared to 5,331,393 in 2010.)
Local government employees similarly covered totaled 13,804,380 in 2013 (compared to 14,273,847 in 2010), as reported by the AHRQ 2013 MEPS Survey III.B.1 [Source updated 12/30/2015]
For the state employees surveyed above:
81.8% had a choice of 2 or more plans
100.0% could choose a managed care plan
96.5% could choose a mixed provider plan
45.4% could choose an exclusive provider plan
3.2% could choose a conventional indemnity plan
56.1% of plans had a waiting period
[Source: AHRQ/MEPS 2013]
An earlier commercial survey projected that states provided coverage for about 3.4 million state government employees and retirees. When their covered dependents and family members were included, the total was about seven million people.
State and local employee health plans cover about 10 percent of the total U.S. workforce and hold more than 20 percent of the nation’s total pension assets. (CPR Report, 10/2014 & Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, 9/2009)
The average state and local employee tends to be older and more expensive to insure compared to private sector employees.
In 2013, six states paid 100 percent of the premium for employee-only coverage. (CPR Report, 10/2014)
Nearly all full-time state workers were eligible for coverage (97%), and take-up was high across most plans, averaging 91%.
74% of part-time state employees had the option of electing health benefits (compared to 48% nationally.)
In state employee plans, 37% of workers were in HMOs, 42% in PPOs, 16% in POS plans and 5% were in conventional indemnity coverage. However, Indemnity plans enrolled a majority of retirees in the Midwest, Northeast and South.
State employer retiree or "post-employment benefits" (OPEB) liabilities and funding progress are featured in a November 2014 report from Standard & Poor’s that contains information about each state’s actions. This research suggests that 32 states now hold some amount in trust, though the amounts are generally quite small, as 93 percent of state liabilities remain unfunded. Also a December 2014 issue brief from National Association of State Retirement Administrators and the Center for State and Local Government Excellence highlights the relative distribution of state OPEB assets and unfunded liabilities. [added Dec. 2014]
State and Federal employees have luscious wide spreading coverage, for their families too! Those of us in the private sector are not so lucky.
So how much do you think the private sector picks up, Porky?
Fuck all relative to what it makes off privatised health. Why do you insist that biological authority is the sole preserve of the private sector? Fucking madness. Why do you also assume that my perspective has no "private sector" reference? Are you privy to some aspect of the biological consequences of aging that the rest of us are not? Do you have a metric that refutes the benefits of preventative health care in favour of this ambulance at the foot of the cliff? You want private hospitals? Fine, take that option and let the rest of the country have the luxury of an alternative.
That wasnt my question. Answer it without qualifiers.
Ambulance at the foot of a cliff? Did you stomp your feet when you typed that?
Assumed no private sector reference because you did not mention any.
I am all for people having an alternative...one size fits all will never work here.
