People who don’t want health insurance bug me

I write health insurance for individuals for a living, and I am amazed how people decide not to have health insurance when their payment is $60-$120 per month. I understand if they have no job and can’t afford that, but when they have a job and choose not to pay it because they will go to the ER for care because you can’t be denied, that irritates the heck out of me. I hear that all the time from mostly people in their 20’s and 30’s. Maybe if they would cut back on their video games, or their driving, or whatever they waste their money on. The government is so hell bent on making sure everyone gets healthcare. So who pays for people that don’t want to pay their portion? I do, you do, and that is not right.

I go to meetings all the time with health carriers and they tell me that premiums will go up 70% based on the latest revisions. Health carriers are in business to write a profit. Their profit margin is 3% and they can’t be profitable if they are insuring everyone on the current rates.

All it takes is interstate commerce, tort reform, and clean up the fraud in Medicare and Medicaid. Also, in regards to treating illegals. Why not patch them up and send them back to their country for their care?

God bless America,
Darrell

Pelosi stupidity

Yesterday, 10/29, Speaker Pelosi introduced legislation that will fundamentally alter how Americans manage their personal health care choices. The Pelosi Health Care Plan spent American liberties to purchase House Democratic votes in order to secure a political victory. The resulting legislation has put freedom and American ingenuity under the knife. For the sake of the country, we must kill this bill.

While Pelosi bought votes behind closed doors, Republicans stood ready with an alternative approach that would fix the problems in our system and, most importantly, not put health care choices in the hands of Washington bureaucrats. Congress should focus on what is driving up the costs of health care and how it can insure people who want and need insurance but have been denied coverage, rather than force through a public option that will crowd out private insurance and create a government-run system. Congress should focus on increasing the accessibility, affordability and portability of private health insurance and enact common sense and cost saving reforms such as national medical liability reform, not force a new system upon Americans that we, as a country, cannot afford.
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HUD / Congress Hacks Reverse Mortgage Limits by 10%

Almost two months ago monies were being spent in the stimulus package that went to things like tunnels for turtles, guard rails for dried lakes, rehabs for airports that saw very few customers, repairs to train stations that had been closed for decades and much more, but we were appalled that Congress was considering Bills which would make our seniors carry the cost of the HUD reverse mortgage program.

We felt that if Billions and Trillions of dollars could be used for these and other projects like skate board parks, hundred million dollar court house renovations, scientific grants for laser beams and wetlands preservation, that surely Congress could find the money to help our seniors continue to utilize the HUD Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM or “Heck-um”) program to continue to stay in their homes. Unfortunately, it looks like we were wrong!

Just yesterday a news item came out that we were going to send $36.7Billion in foreign aid to wealthy countries and countries who don’t like us. That’s right, we can find almost $40Billion for countries who are already wealthy or would like to see us fall into the ocean, but we don’t have the money to fund a program that helps our senior homeowners stay in their homes without cutting the benefit amount to those senior homeowners. Our mothers, fathers, grandmothers and grandfathers aren’t as important as the money we will send to North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Libya, Bolivia, Russia and others.

It seems that not only do we have money for all these pet projects, but we have money for healthcare reform that by all accounts may further cut benefits to seniors in the form of cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. And just today HUD announced with Mortgagee Letter 2009-34 that Principal Limit Factors are being changed effective October 1, 2009 to “assist with the viability of the program”.

It seems that the HECM program was never intended to operate with a credit subsidy as was explained by the Commissioner, David Stevens, in a call to the Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA). He remained open to re-engineering the mortgage insurance premiums or making other changes but indicated that there was nothing HUD could do since the program needed to operate without need of a subsidy.

According to the notice issued by the NRMLA yesterday, several of the larger reverse mortgage lenders did an analysis on the portfolios of loans they have done year to date and that 10% reduction of benefits under the program (this is the amount HUD intends to lower the benefits) would have left approximately 21% of all the borrowers with too little proceeds to pay off the existing loans on their homes. In other words, more than one fifth of all reverse mortgages done would not have been able to be closed unless the borrowers had additional cash they could bring in to closing!

This means that all the borrowers who barely paid off their liens to keep their homes during these extremely tough financial times would be forced to move or even worse, if they were currently delinquent on their home mortgages may have been foreclosed upon if they didn’t have the extra money to cover the reduced benefit amount.

We did more than two dozen loans at this company alone year to date for senior homeowners who were behind on their current mortgage due to the financial climate who would have not have been able to close and would not have been able to keep their homes under the proposed changes. At least a dozen were currently in foreclosure and definitely would have lost their homes with these changes.

Seniors already pay a large portion of this program since the single largest fee in any reverse mortgage transaction is typically the HUD mortgage insurance at closing. On the largest of transactions, this is over $12,500 per borrower to HUD. Then all borrowers also pay one half of 1% for monthly mortgage insurance on their loans. I have no way of knowing what claims have been paid due to the mortgage market crash, but surely the HECM loans are no worse off than the forward or regular loans that HUD has insured through FHA.

The office of Management and Budget (OMB) came up with the numbers to determine the projected shortfall in the program and I for one do not know how they were derived and maybe would take exception with their figures. But to make our seniors pay yet again while we cover the billions and trillions in costs for superfluous programs and projects while our seniors need our help and support is criminal! This is just one more cut to the senior community while we spend for pet projects and for things few can justify and yes, seems we even the found the money to give Congress a raise.

I ask everyone, even if you are not a senior yourself, to contact your representative at http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml and tell them that you strongly urge them to find a way to fully fund the HUD HECM program and instruct HUD to revert back to the existing benefits so that our seniors do not have to foot the bill by way of reduced benefits.

It’s amazing that HUD or Congress would even consider a change at this time when our seniors need their help more than ever and I hope that the Congress hears from a lot of concerned citizens before it’s too late. How about if we renovate one less useless airport, leave out a few guardrails for dried lakes, build one or two less skateboard parks or just send a little less money to the nations who are already wealthy or want to do us badly anyway in the name of our parents and grandparents so that they can stay in their homes? I for one don’t think that’s asking too much.

To comment on this article visit http://www.allrmc.com/articles/HUD_-_Congress_Hack_Reverse_Mortgage_Limits.php

This for real in the 1000 page healthcare plan?

By INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Wednesday, July 15, 2009 4:20 PM PT
Congress: It didn’t take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.
When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.
It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:
“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington’s coverage.

The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, “fizzle out altogether.”

What wasn’t known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.

The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs.

With HSAs out of the way, a key obstacle to the left’s expansion of the welfare state will be removed.

The public option won’t be an option for many, but rather a mandate for buying government care. A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.

Washington does not have the constitutional or moral authority to outlaw private markets in which parties voluntarily participate. It shouldn’t be killing business opportunities, or limiting choices, or legislating major changes in Americans’ lives.

It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It’s scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we’ll come across in the final 1,002.

Vote

Vote on the President, Healthcare issues facing the country on CNN.
Go here-
http://reportcard.cnn.com/

Reverse the appraisal rule that is killing the economy

HVCC Continues to devastate home values across the US. We fear that with higher Fannie and Freddie loan limits it will carry through to our former “jumbo” markets, leading the country even further into recession. As we’ve shared, Representatives Childers (D-MS) and Miller (R-CA) introduced legislation (H.R. 3044) requesting an 18 month moratorium on the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC). H.R. 3044 now has 22 co-sponsors and now is the time to forward our petition to every person you know and every representative in the country. Read some of the comments in the petition and you will soon understand the harmful nature of this horribly misguided code.

ThinkBigWorkSmall applauds the introduction of H.R. 3044 and would like to thank Representative Childers (D-MS) and Representative Miller (R-CA) for their continued efforts and leadership on this issue but it is not enough. Tens of thousands of consumers have already been robbed of their opportunity to enjoy historically low rates by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s rule. HVCC needs to be permanently reversed in order to restore lower costs to the consumer and to protect the thousands of real estate transactions stalled by this horribly misguided code.

Please sign and forward the following petition and forward to everyone you know in the industry and ask them to forward to their representatives: http://www.hvccpetition.com

stop the government

Sign the petition to like 650,000 other American’s and growing and stop the Gov’t before it’s too late.
http://www.freeourhealthcarenow.com/

No Socialized Healthcare

I just wanted to touch base and let you know you can help fight socialized medicine.
Congress is now debating ways to reform health care in the United States. The Health Action Network supports building a strong, sustainable private-sector health care system – and opposes creating a government-run health plan. Click on the links below to join and make sure your voice is heard in the debate. http://www.healthactionnetwork.com/
My sister who has lived recently in Canada and now lives in Australia where they have socialized medicine, says “it’s 9 months to be seen by a doctor. If you need something soon, you pay a private doctor cash for care.” This is not what we want. It hasn’t worked in England, Sweeden, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. Lets not go in their direction.
Let your voice be heard.
God Bless America
Visit www.fryerfinancialgroup.com