OMG, as Americans lose health benefits, they turn to faith-based health "assurance"

Fasten your seat belt, I'm going to tell you about faith-based healthcare.

The economic collapse in the United States will mean more and more Americans are finding themselves out of work and without  their junk insurance.

As I discussed the other day, those of us still able to pay exorbitant health insurance premiums, will likely see staggering increases this year due to dramatically lower health insurer profits. And as this happens the ranks of the 47 million will swell to unprecedented levels.

But, as usual, the government regime does nothing.

So the American people are forced to improvise and come up with alternatives.

Faith-based groups offer
health 'assurance' plans:
High insurance costs drive families to ministries for coverage

Wendy Sweet rarely visits the doctor. But last October, after BlueCross BlueShield increased her family's monthly health insurance premium to $1,150, she sure felt like she needed one.

Sweet, 46, owns South Street Mortgage. As a small business owner, she has no one to help offset her health care costs.

So Sweet joined a small but growing number of people enrolled in faith-based alternatives to health insurance.

The Sweets are new members of Christian Care Medi-Share, a charitable ministry that collects monthly contributions and disburses them among members to pay medical bills. For $459 a month, the family receives help on costs greater than $250, up to $1 million.

"We feel like this protects us in case of catastrophic events," the Charlotte mother of three said. "We can cover the other stuff with the money we save."

http://www.charlotte.com/...

Things are as bleak and terrible as ever.

In a decade in which premiums have nearly doubled nationwide and the number of uninsured has grown from 38 million to 47 million, many people are searching for help.

As I frequently say, don't believe me. But do believe the Kaiser family Foundation.

If you have time, do yourself a favor and read their most recent report. Here is a sad and demoralizing tidbit.

Employer Health Insurance Costs and Worker Compensation
March 2008

Health insurance premiums have increased rapidly over the recent past, growing a cumulative 78 percent between 2001 and 2007 and far outpacing cumulative wage growth of 19 percent over the same period. These figures, which have been widely cited to demonstrate the growing burden of health insurance costs on employers and employees, illustrate overall trends in health benefit costs, but they do not show how this growing burden is affecting employers and employees in different settings.  To address this issue, this analysis shows employer costs for payroll and health benefits over a six-year period for workers in different occupations and at different establishment sizes.

[emphasis added]

http://www.kff.org/...

You might want to understand all this in the context of what Jerome a Paris has described today. Real incomes have not risen, instead our government set up a ponzi scheme, which enabled Americans to pull fake equity out of their fast appreciating homes.  This gave Americans the illusion of wealth--but it was a phoney and as bogus as the lies we were told which gave Mister Bush cover to invade Iraq.

Now the house is on fire. The economy is in freefall, Americans will lose their homes, their jobs,  and by extension, the meagre health benefits  some a few still have. Many employers will not be able to provide benefits as premiums continue to skyrocket.

Where is the government?

This is from Jerome:

Asset prices were propped up only by the fact that people were able to borrow unreasonable amounts of money to bid for them, and were able to borrow such amounts only because they were seen to be acquiring valuable assets - ie the whole thing was a grand illusion, sustained by a collective loss of common sense, helped with massive dollops of self-interested propaganda by the financial, construction, real estate and media industries.

. . .Thanks to wage stagnation, made possible by the threats of outsourcing and offshorisation, and by the demonisation, emasculation or dismantlement of regulations and institutions (like unions) protecting workers, the fruits of growth have been captured by a very few - and this has been hidden because consumption was propped up by readily available debt and the apparently growing virtual wealth of homeowners.

http://www.dailykos.com/...

Back for a moment to ever resourceful American people, and what they are doing to survive the meltdown of the U.S, healthcare system. Like I said, some are turning to faith-based healthcare.

Pam Silberman, president of the North Carolina Institute of Medicine, said that more employers are dropping health insurance, leaving many people unable to afford policies.

In 2006, about 63 percent of people had employer-based insurance, down from 68 percent in 2000.

The average family premium, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, has grown from $6,438 in 2000 to $12,106 in 2007. The median household income in North Carolina is about $41,000.

http://www.charlotte.com/...

I'm going to leave you with two final thoughts. I recognize and I agree, as many of you say, that there is a huge difference between providing citizens with guaranteed and affordable healthcare, as opposed to guaranteed and affordable health insurance.

But, at the end of the day, not having health insurance, causes American citizens to die.

Lack of health policy can kill
Nearly 2 in state die daily, study finds

Not having health insurance can be deadly, a growing problem that accounts for the deaths of 650 Michiganders a year, nearly two a day, a national report released Thursday concludes.

http://www.freep.com/...

And in New Hampshire 70 people  a year die as a direct result of being uninsured.

Oregon?One death a day due to being uninsured.

The list goes on and on and on.

But all is good in the world.  Arlen Specter, the Senator from Pennsylvania has just written about about surviving cancer. It's an uplifting book. He wants us to know that cancer can be conquered. Perhaps, if you have access to healthcare, as he does, but the American people don't.

Arlen Specter survived cancer, because he and his Senate colleagues make sure that they have the  health benefits which they deny to you and me.

Where are we assembling for the revolution?