tbentley.com

The term ‘premium care’ has positive connotations. Premium gas is high-test gas;  premium services are those that provide more services; premium seats at the theater are those front-center.

Premium Health Care is actually referring to the charge you pay for health insurance.  That is, premium as a monthly fee.

‘Voucher’ Insurance Plan would be a more honestly descriptive term.  Or ‘constrained reimbursement’.  ‘Token’ health care?

But the word Premium carries with it its own positive conotation, and its double meaning.

It’s like ‘pro-life’ as opposed to ‘pro-choice’.  You could be pro-choice, and still be against abortion; but if you’re pro-life, you can’t be in favor of abortion: the opposite to pro-life is anti-life.

According to the public trustee of the Medicare program, the elimination of the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t just spell doom for “Obamacare,” but for Medicare and the entirety of the country’s ailing health care system. —TPM (complete article)

 “In 2010, more than 9 out of 10 PPFA’s services going specifically to pregnant women were abortion,” National Right to Life president Carol Tobias wrote in a recent opinion column. “Roughly half of those abortions are performed on unborn girls. That’s the real war on women.”  –HuffPost (article)

Or wait…maybe a war on that other half of the unborn, men?

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/24/nyregion/health-insurers-switch-baseline-for-out-of-network-charges.html

From Wapo:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/how-much-does-an-appendectomy-cost-somewhere-between-1529-and-186955/2012/04/24/gIQAMeKMeT_blog.html#excerpt

From WonkBlog:

@EzraKlein: If health-care costs had tracked inflation over recent decades, the average family would have $5,000 more per year: http://bit.ly/wzDCER

But health-care costs are included in the CPI (inflation rate).  How does that affect the picture?

From Washington Post:

Survey: Rising health insurance costs shifted to workers

And yet, they rail against Obamacare, which would actually decrease costs to workers. Do wonders never cease?

From Ezra Klein, 9/9/2011:

From Andrew Sullivan via Ezra Klein, this incredible

Graphic showing US medical Errors