Small-business owners applaud changes in health care

Along with tax credits created by the new law, a new state program that's federally funded will make it possible to insure low-wage employees.

By Carol M. Ostrom

Seattle Times health reporter

Some people grouse about health costs and wonder why the federal health overhaul hasn't offered much relief, but Frank Albanese, owner of Local Color cafe in Pike Place Market, isn't one of them.

Along with tax credits created by the new law, a new state program that's federally funded will make it possible for him to insure his low-wage employees for the first time since he opened the cafe seven years ago.

Now, Albanese said, insuring employees is not only affordable, it's doable — and "doable means we're going to do it."
(Editor/TRT: Eat your own black hearts U. S, Chamber of Commerce.) Read more here.

Health Care opposition revealed to support more not repeal

Doh!! Polling numbers today show what many of the quieter among us knew all along - President Obama and the Democrats didn't use the mandate we gave them and give us the health care overhaul we wanted. Instead they listened to biased and undeniable Fox News, along with bogus 'grassroots' support financed primarily by billionaires who, as an irony to their very supporters, advocate survival of the fittest. Not only would Republicans and Tea Partiers let insurance companies drop the chronically I'll, they offer as alternatives an exchange where the sickest would pool together for insurance. As one friend noted to me, it's like putting everyone whose house burned down into a pool with others who'd had their houses torched. Obviously the distressed would pay and the lucky would not - but what is insurance for if not to pay when unfortunate events occur?

Maybe I'm jaded because I actually studied - and passed - economics. Oh yea, and I've worked globally in banking and finance too. I listen to a few out there who obviously know nothing about how our money and banking system work but are against anything our government will try and do. Some times you just want to slap them but you know it is a result of the decay in our educational system - a product of those poor home schooled kids who learned from their clueless parents, and from those in schools gutted by greedy homeowners and those without the ability to see the benefits of actual wide-spread learning beyond rigid and uncaring dogma.

Maybe too because I'm terminally I'll with cancer. Medical Bills to keep me alive totaled nearly $23,000. Prescription medication averages nearly retail $6,000 per month. And because I was relatively healthy when I contracted my disease, I've already lived longer than I should have statistically, and am faced with maybe 5 years of $200,000 in bills. Who that much besides the billionaires trying to talk the rest of us to drop this health care and give them another tax break.

Or, maybe it is because of my co-editor who lived in a country that spends 6% less of their GNP on medical care, and yet outperforms our 'capitalist' system. You see, my friend on the right above crushed his elbow. We drove to the nearest hospital who surgically repaired it without even asking for anything beyond his name. He could have been from Mars for all they cared. And when he was discharged did they ask for anything? NO! And did they do a good job? Their work was perfect and has never caused any problems in the dozen or so years after inserting screws.


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