Costs have escalated rapidly over the past four of five years and the insurance we need at our age and physical conditions is rapidly becoming unaffordable. At the current time, just the two of us, our insurance costs are over $14,000 a year plus Medicare charges. We still have co-pays, dental expense and over-the-counter drug expenses. Many of the drugs I take are vital to my survival and extremely expensive. My wife has one drug that costs thousands of dollars per year without prescription coverage. There is no possible way we could continue to live (literally) without these medications.

I have been handicapped for the past seven years with considerable paralysis. We have additional medical expenses because my wife needs help with me for assistance she can no longer provide to me in many aspects of daily living. Home health care, rather than a nursing home, therefore becomes very important to us and yet this much lower cost method of senior care is not reasonably available. This seems to be counterproductive to the extreme since nursing home costs would wipe us out and make us dependent on the government at far greater expense.

Prescription drug costs are exorbitant to the extreme and yet there is no mechanism for the government to bargain with drug companies for drug costs. This is something that must be corrected and cost lowered in a very dramatic way. Gouging is not an acceptable form of health insurance.

I obviously don’t have the figures but it is inconceivable to me that overall medical costs would also be drastically curtailed if there was not such a plethora of paperwork involved. Insurance company profits and inefficiencies should not be subsidized by the government. Billions in paperwork and unnecessary red tape would be saved. If you want to keep insurance companies in the loop, their profits should be capped and their ability to refuse service or to set up nonpayment of pre-existing conditions should be limited or completely removed.

None of the above is rocket science. When my wife and myself, any further increases in medical expenses will result in changing what is already extreme hardship to an impossible crisis. No one in this country should have to make a choice between basic needs and necessary medical care. Our income, is fixed, for the most part, our investments are down by substantial amounts and my ability to continue to make money by continuing to work is severely compromised by the financial meltdown we are all suffering. This is not a long-term problem. It is a problem today. Unless something is done about it, this would be a relentless and destructive problem in the near and long-term. There can’t be any months long waiting period to get something done.
We are fortunate. My wife and I have savings and some resources— which however are being rapidly depleted. While there are people in much more dire circumstances and 47 million uninsured, those who could afford health insurance are rapidly being squeezed into poverty by the outrageously escalating costs. Thanks for listening. Sy and Suzanne Levy

I own a small home care agency. I pay my employees the most money I can based on the reimbursement rates I receive. If the State of PA offered me $10 more per hour to raise my workers wages and provide health insurance, I would have to say “no thank you”. It would price our services out of range for all of my private duty clients thus forcing them into bankrupcy and into nursing homes. It would also take away all of the state welfare subsidies my employees presently enjoy (housing, childcare,food stamps, medical benefits for their children and sometimes themselves…). It would also force many of my women employees who already have health insurance to take ours verses the insurance that they presently enjoy by benefit of their spouses.

When anyone tries to help direct care workers, they have to look at all sides of the coin. Not everyone is low income and uninsured.

If Governer Rendell gets his way, the waiver consumers (those who receive home care services paid for by the state/medical assistance programs) will all be served by union represented “employees” but exempt from overtime laws and home care agency regulations AND PAYING UNION DUES. No one will work for a private duty agency providing services to the middle class since the state will be paying premium rates to pay higher wages and benefits to unsupervised and often unskilled “employees”. Again, the middle class loses by being forced to spend their last dime, end up without the care they need, forced into a nursing home or worse yet–dead. What happend to the 50/50 goal of a balanced long term care system or is that only for the poor?

Please do not persist in excluding service providers from your discussions and lobbying on behalf of direct care workers. Health care workers are not the only low income workers who lack health insurance and other benefits. Look at sales clerks at the local mall, waitresses, bank tellers to name a few. Workers with little more than a high school diploma can’t expect to earn big bucks. Casemanagers for our local senior services office earn only slightly more (but do have benefits) but are required to have a bachlors degree.

My suggestion is to allow a fast track for direct care workers to access PA Adult Basic (with some improvements in coverage and dental). Direct care is a much needed occupation and fast tracking DCWs into a healthcare plan will help attract and keep workers that are responsible enough to know that they must have health coverage. It would help to stabalize our industry.

Please look for a balanced solution to the problem of lack of affordable health insurance for low income workers. Talk to all involved, learn all sides of the issue and propose a fair solution for everyone involved–consumers, employees and employers.

It is a joke that people expect someone with 2 kids earning 9 dollars an hour at mcdonalds who has to pay for childcare rent, ect could ever get out of that situation without help. Employers like that try to keep the worker just under the hours required so that they dont have to give them insurance.

I pose a question that I would like anyone that wants to, to address. I am a college student, a senior in a nursing program which is 32 hours per week minium class time plus many hours of homework required. I also work as much as I can, usually another 24-32 hours. I cannot work 40 so i cannot get healthcare. I am 28 years old. My choice then is between getting a degree so that i can improve my future or working full time so that i can go to the doctor if i get sick. This is a huge loophole that noone seems to notice. I think that someone like me who is working almost full time and doing full time school shhould be allowed to go to the doctor if they get sick! (I think all people should be able to go to the doctor if they get sick1) It is a FACT that a large percentage (i think up to 80%) of those uninsured are hard working middle class people!

My final point is that healthcare workers work with people that are in the most frail state of health. PA is has the 3rd largest elderly population in the nation. Elderly people have weaker immune systems then younger people. Healthcare workers must be able to get treatment for their sicknesses so that they do not bring that into the nursing home or hospital where they work! It would probablly save money to for us to be able to go to a 100$ dollar office visit versus having an elderly person get sick and have to go to the hospital for thousands of dollars. At the county nursing home that I work, you may not call off sick unless you have a doctors note more then 3 times per year. Many workers just come into work sick rather then lose their job.

Keep up the job PHI! While I am deeply sad that this healthcare bill failed, I believe that one day soon this legislation will pass!