What did Obama mean last night when he said he would "work" with employers to lower the cost of my health care premiums???

We can always count on Todd for an unbiased explaination, which I am sure will be forthcoming.

Well,
I officailly joined the ranks of the Un-insured this month. It was running me close to $2,000 a month and I just couldn't stomache it anymore. The real joke is, noone will take us because my wife has endimetriosis and has not had surgery for it yet. The same surgery the insurance I had was stalling us on for the last 2 years. I figure that I by the time we could finally get them to give her the surgery, I will have paid the cost of it again. On top of all that, they still will refuse to cover my son (mildly autistic) even though every thing to do with his condition wouldn't be covered anyway. In the end, I was behind and came up with the money to bring it up to date, thought about it and realized we had visited the doctor once in the last 6 months and that the deductible wasn't even met. The shy $8,000 it would take to update it went into my account and I decided to risk it until I can come up with something better. The real kicker, if I had put the money I was paying into a seperate account and gathered interest, I would be nearing or perhaps even passed the maximum payout the insurance will pay for most incidents. Continue to pay until I retire and I will be paying much more than the maximum lifetime payout. Doesn't really sound like insurance to me, rather just a hole to throw money into.

The real joke is talking about a $6000 tax credit. First of all it would come as a tax credit, meaning you would have to come up with the entire premimum up front. Then, at the end of the year, I still would be short about $16,000 if you count the co-pays and dedectibles. About what some people make all year.

It really irks me to here government employees complain about a $10 or $20 premium increase or a $20 co-pay, when they have the same insurance as me and mine went up $300.00 a month.

Did you look into a Health Savings Plan? That links directly to the comment you made about putting it into a separate account. I was at a party with a Financial Manager on Saturday, and he gave me a pretty good run down regarding those, and it actually seems pretty smart. He has his wife and child on one, and the guy is really cagey with money.

I believe he said he would offer tax incentives to small business owners who provide healthcare benefits to their employees Jerry. I believe he said it a couple of times throughout the course of the debate too. He also said that streamlining the process and cracking down on insurance companies would help lower premiums. And he said that spending some of the 8 BILLION dollars a month that we already do HERE... INSTEAD of in Iraq... is another step that would help.

Did you not hear him... or did you not WANT to hear him?

I heard it all Mark, it was the one statement that I didn't hear explained.

Have you been by his website to read what his plan is?

Both he and McCain have websites that go into more detail about their plans than can be answered in a debate forum.

If those websites aren't updated daily how would I know what the "current" plan is?