[Kobi]

Originally Posted by Kelt

I don't want to derail things, but this one really stuck in my craw. I did a little look around, no deep research or anything, in fact all I did was google the line I bolded above. I came up with a summary report from 2011 that hits on the high points of what companies of various sizes are doing to prepare for national health care.

This is the Mercer's National Survey I ran across. I am still going through it. Pages 4 and 9 show the ramp up to national care. Page 33-34 is a clearly stated objective. Starting on page 51 are the plan incentive ideas. Page 87 is interesting as well from a retirement point of view. Page 92 and on show the already in place ramifications of the national health policy coming. Page 94 confirms these 'incentives' are here to stay.

A couple of terms tossed around in the report are CDHP: "The concept of a CDHP is to return control of health care dollars to the person who uses them, the consumer. The consumer is given a financial incentive to control costs and as a result tend to become more directly involved in the selection and usage of health care services."

And PPACA: The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act

If anyone is interested in this approach to health care that we are seeing, you might want to have a glance, it certainly opened my eyes. This report is a couple of years old and the emphasis is on using positive reinforcement. It would seem that CVS has decided to take the carrot and turn it into a stick. I have seen some plans where a person could protect their privacy for a one time lost discount of maybe $50-100 per year, but at $600 per year as mentioned in the article, I don't think the majority of CVS employees are going to see that as a viable option.

While I agree with the concept of making healthy lifestyle education available to all people (something to counter the current marketing of crap food and latest drugs model), I really don't see forcing it down someones throat as making it somehow more effective. On the contrary, I see it as an effective way to create resentment on a large scale.

I can't wait to see what will be on the table for non-corporate yet required insurance programs for those not currently insured.

Just my .02

Derail/rant over, carry on.

I understand your frustration.

There is a pervasive need in this country to shift blame whenever possible. Health care is no different. And, the above, has nothing to do with Obamacare. This type of strategy was going on well before Obama took office. He is just the convenient scapegoat.

Big business wants us to believe that if people were just healthier, chose healthier, lived healthier then they would need less care and this would cause costs to drop.

They also want us to believe that their stock piling of our health information is for our own good and will somehow turn us into better, more informed consumers. This too will drive down costs.

They need us to believe whatever cockamamie scheme they cook up i.e. incentives work! justify the potential and real discriminatory practices that they employ.

They need us to believe that WE ARE THE PROBLEM and they are only looking to help us fix OUR problem.

They need to divert attention from the way our economic system works, how the health industry works, how the different costs negotiated by different providers and insurers which is so convoluted I'm not even sure if anyone knows what the actual costs are, how the fallacies about their "research" and production costs justify their exorbident prices in this country while they somehow mange to drop the price to a mere fraction of the supposed cost in other countries where costs are set by the government, the fallacy behind how people overuse or misuse services, the ways in which the food industry has created addicts for their lucrative and specially chosen product lines, etc.

It is a very paternalistic, simplistic, and blaming approach to a very complex and interrelated problem. The makers of statin drugs would be out of business if the food industry didnt provide addictive products that make us walking cholesterol time bombs. We're not even gonna address how both industries are associated with a single parent company. Create both the problem and the solution? Hello? And, you want us to believe your overall goal is to put yourself out of business? Yeah right.

Ok, now my blood pressure is in the dangerous level LOL. Thanks Kelt.