Earning less, paying more for health care: fighting a battle on two fronts
Posted on April 28th, 2009 by Hygeia , National Women's Law Center in From Our Partners, Tell Us Your Story
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Today, April 28th, is Blog for Fair Pay Day. In recognition of this important day, our guest post by Lisa Codispoti, Senior Counsel for Health and Reproductive Rights, National Women’s Law Center, relates to health care and equal pay.
Between 2000 and 2006, health insurance premiums increased 87.5 percent—4 times more than wages. In addition to the burden of inflated health care costs, women are still paid only 78 cents for every dollar earned by men—with women of color earning even less. In a world where women are earning significantly less than men for comparable work, how can they also afford health care?
Pay inequity for women compounds the issues that already exist with our broken health care system. This is a system that makes unfair practices by insurance companies flourish, such as allowing health to be more expensive for women. For example, women pay higher premiums than men when they try to buy health insurance directly from an insurance company through the individual health insurance market (a practice known as gender rating.) Even worse is that many of these health plans do not cover maternity care or expect women to pay an additional fee (what is called a rider) to gain maternity coverage. Women are then left trying to stretch their already smaller paycheck for a much larger health care bill.
Ref Health Care reform
Thinking outside the box along the lines of the creation of the Peace Corps, Voting Rights legislation and other legislative milestones- A good partial solution to the Health Care Crisis would be to follow the Mexican model - Mexico subsidizes medical education of doctors and dentists.
Graduates repay the government by working gratis in a government clinic for one year before going into private practice.
Net result- poor and average Mexican (and foreign visitors) can see a doctor for basic care for five bucks and the cost of materials!
Also - an overabundance of doctors is created helping lower the exclusivity and mystique re medical doctors (and what they charge)
Also - doctors don't graduate with huge medical school debt as in the US as the government has subsidized the cost.
A variation of this program would take a huge volume of patients away from hospitals and private clinics and save patients millions in payments for basic services.
I live in Cabo San Lucas and have been using Mexican doctors and dentists for a decade in Baja California Sur and have been pleased with the quality of service here having both private and low-cost (almost no-cost) options.
I have started 2 dental clinics that promote dental vacations to Cabo, and have written many magazine and Ezine articles about medical and dental tourism
Great idea. Here is also a way to save over $20 billion in the current federal budget and pay for the public option:
I have contacted the Waterkeeper Alliance to forward this policy proposal to Robert F. Kennedy. This policy change could help seal the legacy for both Robert and Ted Kennedy as it could cover the uninsured and also cut the governments carbon footprint by 20% to 50%. Our hearts and prayers are with the Kennedy family.
The government already has the money to pay for universal health and at the same time reduce the carbon footprint of office buildings by 50%.
The Federal government pays for almost one billion square feet of office space. Most office space is very expensive yet it sits unused 70% of the time because most white collar work is scheduled for only one shift per day or only 45 hours out of a 168 hour week. 30% efficiency is completely unacceptable in today's economic and ecological environment. Most buildings are open for 12 hours each day from 6 am to 6 pm. By keeping buildings open an additional 4 or 5 hours each day, we could schedule 2 shifts of white collar workers, thus increasing our efficiency by 100% and reducing our carbon footprint by 50%. We could cut the cost of overhead for each employee by 40 to 50%, half as much infrastructure, half as much office space, half as many computers and supplies. With the overhead for each of our 2 million Federal workers approaching $50,000 per year, the potential savings could be $50 billion per year, enough to pay for health care reform.
If adopted by government and private industry this simple plan will help in the following ways:
•Save federal gov a trillion dollars in next 10 years
•Exactly amount needed for universal healthcare
•Reduce white-collar overhead costs by 50%
•Reduce carbon footprint of office space by 50%
•Reduce budget deficits for most state governments
•Reduce our dependence on foreign oil
•Make workers competitive in the global economy
•Improve profits for all businesses and
•Increase tax receipts for state/fed governments
•Businesses can hire more employees & lower prices
For details and comments see:
http://whitecollargreenspace.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/greenspaceguy
This is what anti-unversal health care people dont realize. If you rely on private industry long enough you will eventually get burned… because its more profitable not to insure someone then it is to insure them.
We'll have to nationalize it eventually, there's really no other choice.
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I work for a Health Insurance company. We are not given healthcare at the company's expense it comes out of our paychecks. The raises we get are performance based, you don't perform you don't get a raise yet the cost of our insurance rises every year. For 2010 it covers less and costs almost $30.00 more, that's $30.00 more dollars coming out of my pocket every pay period. I care for my disabled mother yet cannot claim her on my insurance. I have 2 children as well. The CEO of the company I work for is one of the main people fighting against the public option. While she earns millions her employees are barely scraping by. I've tried to look for another job because I simply cannot bear it here but the economy makes the job market a tough place. The senate HAS to push the public option through people cannot continue to have to struggle without good solid healthcare coverage.