Illegal Aliens And Health Insurance
11.2%: increase in health care premiums in 2004
$922: amount an average family of four had to pay in premium increases in 2004
Using those numbers that average family is paying about $1,000 a month today. By 2010, I’ve seen projections where the family’s cost will be $17,000 to $25,000 per year. Oakland County in Michigan has tax payers paying about $20,000 per year, per family, now.
The rising cost of healthcare is faster than normal inflation for a bunch of reasons. Lucky, the whole system is so waisteful currently that there is room to find plenty of savings.
We just busted a guy here in Florida for doing 122 surgeries on one guy and milking the Medicare system.
Posted by Z Woof
06/18/2005 at 12:07 PM
Also keep in mind that getting insurance for a very small business is VERY difficult. They ask you all sorts of questions about the employees and when the business was founded. Big pain.
This is the thing that pisses me off THE MOST about ‘illegales’ THEY DON’T PAY INTO THE SYSTEM. Get money under the table and no income tax. The people who are hiring are just as much of the problem as the aliens themselves. Small businesses are who are hiring them mostly, too! The big guys can’t get away with hiring huge numbers of illegals like thousands of small businesses scattered all across the land can. There was a thing with Tyson Chicken down in North Carolina having a scandal a year or two ago where it turned out that a shitload of illegals were working in one of their chicken processesing plants, but I think that is the exception.
They say Canada is soooo great because they have free health care for all, but you know what, we do too, it’s only for illegals, though. If you work and are honest, then you gotta pay - talk about a double standard! When is W and all those clowns on Capitol Hill gonna do something about this!!
Z,
Someone should have busted that one guy who succumbed to 122 surgeries.
Or was he part of the scam? Sheesh.
Posted by Phoenix
06/18/2005 at 04:04 PM
Wait a minute. 19 million uninsured people?
The democrats always come up with a figure closer to 43 million. hmmmm.
Posted by Phoenix
06/18/2005 at 04:06 PM
Phoenix: Yes, people do scam with their doctors against the tax payer. The FBI is all over health care down here. The DEA busted one Doctor from India because the amounts of money being transferred was just tooo large that they thought it must be drug money. No, it’s Medicare fraud that the doctor collected ripping off Medicare with the help of his dot head patients.
I don’t think the Feds can bust the old guy who had 122 surgeries. Unless it was for unlawful stoopidity. Some people do get paid by their doctors to commit fraud. In a billion dollars scam, 2 months ago, they busted people from coast to coast. Surgeons in California were paying docs across America to send them clients. The CA Docs were paying all the other docs for each person sent. Then they paid the patients cash for coming. Then they paid a referral fee if they could talk others into having the surgery. Then the most common procedure was one to stop sweating of the palms. Very dangerous procedure that in order to get to a place on the spinal cord they deflate a lung. The FBI sure is busy chasing down Medicare fraud.
All expense paid trip to beautiful Cal-E-fornia, plus cash, your cost: 1 Deflated Lung. (Sushi included)
As far as the ininsured numbers, 50 million totally without insurance seems about right. They are not all broke. My fish monger is about 55 years old that has a very successful fishing and retailing business. Just the new restaurant that will open this month is worth millions. He doesn’t have insurance on himself or his wife, or all the adult children and their families who work for him.
He says, “Health insurance costs too much.”
He is correct for people without assets. However, if one of his daughters was sick and the cost was $300,000, he would be writing out a check. This uninformed self-employed tight-wad could probably swing it. But a lot of people would lose a million dollar business over a $300,000 claim. Besides, a $300,000 sickness in Minnesota would be $600,000 down here anyway, and probably the survival odds would deminish. This Greek business owner probably thinks OLDCATMAN’S surgery cost was $5,000.
The Feds are also after the Florida Hospital Association too. The problem is that if the guy with no insurance goes into the hospital, and the bill is $100,000, this is a “Retail Number” that is deminished to $50,000 if you have insurance. Only the uninsured are paying double. The Hispanic population has the highest percentage of uninsureds. So, the Florida Hospitals are being accussed of Discrimination, which is a Federal Offense.
So it’s hard to judge any numbers because they may be using some formula on how much was written off tax forms for uninsured care or something equally as stupid. OCM knows more about doctors doing charity care for tax reductions than I do. He said he is going to post his bill, I can’t wait.
Posted by Z Woof
06/19/2005 at 08:43 AM
One thing is certain. When the time comes for all these illegal leeches to be “amnestied” (read, to be given voting rights), any number of politicians (read, wing-collar prostitutes) will be falling all over themselves claiming credit for “what we did for you, our newest citizens!”
The Statue of Liberty was meant to reflect a Goddess, not a street hooker so cheap that she was made in the Third World on third shift!
Grrrrr!
But Tann, the Statue Of Liberty was made in France. Isn’t that the same thing as “Third World Country on third shift”.
Great cartoon, OCM. Good job.
Skipper, my friend, neither of us are overly fond of the France we know today (and you are probably right, speaking of the France of today).
But in all fairness, I must contend that at the time “Miss Liberty” was made (the 1870’s and 1880’s), there was still good reason to regard France as a leader of the civilized world. Following the catastrophe of the Franco-Prussian War, the collapse of Napoleon III’s Second Empire, the loss of Alsace-Lorraine, and the payoff of a huge indemnity, France was getting back on its feet in the form of the Third Republic. Liberty (as we ourselves thought of it) was very much in the French national consciousness in those days, and this spirit went far to make Paris the shrine of civilization that it became. Among other French contributions to civilization in this era were “Art Nouveau” (one of my favorite styles to this day), and one of my favorite composers, Claude-Achille Debussy.
The Third Republic had its political weaknesses and problems, true, and in the end, it became so infested with socialists, communists, fascists and defeatists that it became the house of cards we saw in May 1940. However, in its early decades, it had plenty of vitality, and it maintained enough of this to survive as the anvil to the hammer of the German Empire in World War I. And a pretty substantial hammer it was, too.
Marianne would do well to recapture her spirit of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That spirit is largely what we have seen dragged through the dirt in our day.
OCM: About $3,000 a day in 2005 Colorado for a hospital stay.
My Mom showed me a bill from 1972 at the Mayo Clinic and they were charging $50 a day in the hospital. So this varifies that we have had inflation.
A $300,000 cancer will cost $3 million by the time the average baby boomer dies. Do your country a favor and die in your sleep, that’s cheap. Or, if you are an illegal alien with cancer, head staight to Mexico City. Mexican Medicaid and Senor Fox will take care of you, that’s for sure.
Posted by Z Woof
06/19/2005 at 10:14 AM
French medicine really sucks. I knew Arafat was a dead man the second he was admitted to a French hospital.
A great American said, “There is no hell there is only France”
Posted by Z Woof
06/19/2005 at 10:22 AM
Z,
I’m so naive about this stuff. One of the last things I told Parker as he pulled out today to head for Lauderdale was to get some catastrophic medical insurance. He will also need to buy car insurance, so I told him to see if he couldn’t get both at the same place. Was that dumb advice? He had catastrophic insurance in Colorado that cost him $55 a month. Will it be more in Florida? (He let the Colorado policy flag.)
Posted by Phoenix
06/19/2005 at 08:21 PM
Z,
Thank you for the explanation of the fraud that goes on in Medicare. It is too sickening. Let’s send Elliot Spitzer in to clean it up. God, that man is driven. I hope he doesn’t win the governorship of NY. What a waste. Well, maybe not a waste, but he sure managed to shake up those inclined to commit fraud.
Posted by Phoenix
06/19/2005 at 10:49 PM
