The social effect of pure capitalism is to stratify society, to divide the people of a society according to their assets and monetary wealth. At the top are those with money, which is power, and at the bottom are those who have neither power nor wealth. In a capitalistic oligarchy, the rich hold political power, create the laws, and own and control the army and police. With few exceptions, such societies are governed to keep the rich in power and the rest enslaved to them.

While the United States still has those who would see oligarchy the rule of the land, oligarchy cannot succeed here, because the nation concentrates political power in the hands of the people, in the hands of the majority. Pure capitalism does not create a rich majority. The rich are in the minority. While their money may have significant influence on the people, they cannot buy the majority without spending the basis of their power. Having a common plight, a common economic condition, the majority rule the United States with their interest taking first seat. Having power in numbers, the majority of the people are able to make demands on the rich, in the U.S. commonly called ‘big business’. It was in the exercise of this majority power in the 1930s that the people of the United States required business to contribute to the security of the aged and unemployed through social security insurance.

Business was held partially responsible for the wear and tear of societies members. It was President Theodore Roosevelt who first called on business to take up that responsibility, through the provision of health insurance for the working man and woman they had ‘used up’ and tossed on the heap of the broken, disabled, and sick. It took a Great Depression and Marxist revolutions throughout the world to put business on notice that the people would exercise their power and take from them what it would. Social security insurance arose as a balance between the people’s power to confiscate and the capitalist’s right to hold on to what they had profited. It was in 1935, under his “New Deal” administration, while the country was still struggling to overcome the Great Depression, that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the social security insurance bill that required the employer and the employee to contribute equal amounts to the social security fund that would be used to cover the living expenses of the aged, the retired, the unemployed, and the disabled.

Social security insurance is funded by taxes on an employee’s pay. A percentage of the pay must be paid into the fund according to the Federal Insurance Contribution Act (FICA) of 1954. The employee pays half the amount and the employer the other half. A self-employed person must pay both parts, but may reduce their net income by half the amount they paid into FICA. To be eligible for retirement benefits, the employee must have paid into FICA for a minimum of ten years. At 62 years of age, a person may retire and begin receiving the benefits of social security insurance. The ending years of a U.S. citizen will not be spent in degradation and misery.

Millions of people today are living on retirement benefits provided by social security insurance. Millions are able to live above the poverty level while they seek other employment. The vast majority of Americans turn away from extreme socialism, agreeing to let the rich keep their wealth in exchange for humane care. All who receive these benefits have paid their share for them. To keep their wealth, business pays the rest. Whether just or not, the nation remains tranquil, with social security insurance benefits a major factor in maintaining our democracy.

Although many young men and women do not realize it, student health insurance is generally quite affordable. In fact, most students are only charged once each quarter or semester, as long as you acquire your insurance plan through the university. If you are a full-time student, you can likely obtain student health insurance coverage for the entire semester or quarter for around $50 or less. Many student health insurance plans are as low as $30. This even includes dental insurance coverage as well. You really can’t beat that very low rate, regardless of what insurance plan you get. It is imperative to stay covered just in case.

Okay, so you may not have any idea where to turn for more information regarding student health insurance plans and programs. This is no big deal! Especially since there are simple and convenient website like Student-Health-Insurance.com, FreeQuotes.Vimo.com, and eHealthInsurance.com to check out for more details. The key is to acquire the type of coverage that suits you. If you are like most people between the ages of 18 and 25, you have no health conditions that you need to worry about. Therefore you can get the student health insurance coverage you need for very little money. Most universities offer this.

Like most health and dental coverage plans, student health insurance often covers a percentage. This means if you need to go see the doctor for any reason, you may have a small co-pay, or it may not cost you anything at all. Prescriptions drugs will also be less expensive if you need to acquire them for an illness. To give you an example, you may have to get a cavity filled. This might cost around $125. However, since you have a decent student coverage plan, it may only cost you around $30. This is certainly not bad in comparison. This is why it always pays to have a good health insurance coverage plan in place. You simply never know when you might need it.

Right away, people can expect to be paying a third more on individual policies, says the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. If this gets your back up and gets you planning the vitriol you’ll pour down in your letter to your Congressman, you’re out of luck. The government doesn’t really have enough power, dictating prices. But there certainly is going to be plenty of table pounding at state legislatures. It’s not that the health insurance companies don’t see how difficult they are making it for families to get access to healthcare. For a family of three, that works out to something like $1300 a month. In several states, consumer protection groups our putting together major protest rallies; and they should. Once access to affordable individual health insurance is taken away, where does that leave us? And since the insurance companies understand the situation from our point of view, they do support President Obama’s health care reform, now hopelessly stalled. They want some kind of system that can help everyone in the country be covered too. If lots of people drop out of the system like they are doing now, the companies have no choice but to spread their losses among other existing customers.

Finding Affordable Individual Health Insurance

Still, the government in Maine, rejected some of the health insurance companies rate increases; after negotiations, they brought it down to 11% or so. And the health insurance companies are suing the state. The company argues that they aren’t doing this for some kind of obscene profit. They claim that they can barely stay above water as it is.  In Kansas too, insurance companies are raising their rates by a third. Mostly, the governments are falling in line behind these demands. They do agree that the cost of taking care of people is rising, and one can’t expect these companies to not pass on those costs to the customer. Basically, anything between 10% and 25% is what we need to expect. Just one more effect of the recession.

So the Republicans have successfully put the kibosh on the health care plan. Not that they don’t have any ideas of their own; whatever health care plan  comes to pass, it is sure to have a lot of Republican inputs to it. One of their important suggestions in the whole debacle, is the idea that Americans should be able to buy affordable health insurance across states. Right now, the situation is that you can only buy insurance from an operator who is registered in your own state.

Actually, that is a particularly significant piece of Republican sentiment in the matter. The Democrats are actually taking the Republicans up on this idea, and you can fully expect that whatever health care bill passes, this should be a part of it. Actually, you heard a lot of this when Senator McCain was stumping for his presidency in 2008. Everyone now feels that turning the entire country into the single health insurance market, will only make things more competitive for the insurance companies, and bring prices down. If you live in Colorado, and you suddenly find that a small health insurance company in Pennsylvania is making an offer that your local corporations just cannot match. You could easily buy across state lines.

And they have a point. If your state government has no control over most of the insurance providers in your state, the government just can’t exercise of its consumer protection laws anymore. The companies will just say, “Oh!, We’re from out of state, so nice try”. Actually, in effect, people could end up paying more expensive premiums. Affordable health insurance actually looks much more shaky under this plan, Not to mention more expensive. So how would this actually work?

The states will have to form new principles of how to control companies operating there from outside. They will just have to bring out new legislation to this effect. And they would also need to license their own insurance corporations, to deal outside of the state. Alternatively, the federal office that governs the healthcare issues of federal employees, could deal with out-of-state insurers. In fact, the federal government could apply a single law to all of them, and prohibitsthem from offering anything less than a high level of care.

But the thing is, more choice does not always mean cheaper costs. What if it just results in customers choosing the policies with the lowest price tag, and opting for the lowest cover? For most poor families, getting the lowest possible amount of cover could seem to be a really attractive option sometimes, until the day they fall ill. And what happens if there is a dispute? There are hundreds of thousands of disputes every year involving health insurance companies that deny claims for perfectly valid treatment options. If there is a dispute, subscribers may find themselves having to travel across state lines each year. Affordable health insurance, doesn’t come from an excess of competition. It comes with a reasonable amount of time, and proactive government legislation.