One of the issues facing the country is affordable healthcare. The COBRA system is prohibitive and is no answer to providing insurance to the uninsured, underinsured or uninsurable.
For Unemployed Americans, COBRA Simply Costs Too Much (click here)
January 11, 2009 by admin
Washington (SmartAboutHealth) - Families USA released a new report which has revealed that for many unemployed Americans, COBRA health insurance is simply too expensive.
Families USA, the non-profit group, put out the report this week, focusing on COBRA, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1985.
The goal behind COBRA was to make health insurance affordable for unemployed Americans.
Families USA has found though that this is not the case, as they compared the average monthly premium for family health insurance under COBRA to how much compensation an average unemployed American received.
They found that the average compensation is around $1,300 for an unemployed American, while the average monthly premiums for family health insurance coverage under COBRA is $1,000.
This leaves next to nothing for families to live off of, making COBRA simply too expensive.
Overall, only 25% of those who are actually eligible for COBRA sign up for it, mainly due to the high cost.
With 47 million Americans living without health insurance, this is not a positive sign.
...During Dr. Julie Gerberding’s six years directing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, critics lambasted her, accusing her of sacrificing science for politics and carrying the Bush agenda on global warming and other issues into the world of scientific research....
...New administrations often clean house at the top of their agencies. Gerberding’s resignation, effective Jan. 20, became public Friday. She was unavailable for comment Saturday.
As the CDC’s first female director departs, some health care advocates say they hope a change in leadership spurs a change in direction and priorities for the agency, which employs 9,000 people and has a budget of $9 billion.
“In the last eight years, across the board in government, politics has been trumping science,” said Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust for America’s Health, a public health watchdog group based in Washington. Levi said he hopes the new administration “returns to science as the basis of policy.”
Gerberding was criticized in 2007 after it was alleged she let the White House censor her congressional testimony on climate change. A deleted section of the testimony included the statement that “catastrophic weather events such as heat waves and hurricanes are expected to become more frequent, severe and costly....”
