Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The premise of insurance is to spread the risk. It's the premise of homeowner's insurance, of car insurance, and of health insurance. It's one reason why it's important to have insurance when you're healthy, so that when you get sick, you won't go sign up just when you get sick, because that increases the cost for everyone.
It's a fun uphill struggle, making health insurance as a comedian, actor, and author. But it's hard to explain to people how I make a living. In New York, most people know enough creative types that I make some sense. But when I'm talking to someone like my suburban cousins or my mom's friends, it doesn't always go smoothly.
A few drugs - such as beta-blockers, statins and glycogen control medications - have proved very effective at managing hypertension, heart disease, diabetes and strokes. Most insurance plans charge something for them. Why not make drugs like these free? Not for everyone, but just the groups for whom they are provably effective.
A franchise is dictated on the success of doing one film right, so if you can get it done correctly, you've got a chance of something else, but sometimes it just doesn't work that way. Ideally, it's insurance for the future; if you can do something, if you can find a character that people really do like, then you're very lucky.
I think doctors are really suffering now. They're suffering in the sense that they feel torn between serving their patients in the best way they can and dealing with all of requirements of the insurance companies and the HMOs and the hassles and the paper work and the increasing pressures to do less and less for their patients.
Today we have a health insurance industry where the first and foremost goal is to maximize profits for shareholders and CEOs, not to cover patients who have fallen ill or to compensate doctors and hospitals for their services. It is an industry that is increasingly concentrated and where Americans are paying more to receive less.
We need to level the playing field so that people who buy insurance individually at the same tax rates as those who buy it than get it through work. We need to be able to let people to shop across state lines for better deals with insurance that works for them and their family, not something the government says they have to have.
My average fan works for about $20 per hour, if they are lucky enough to have a job. And then factoring in insurance, taxes and such, they're maybe bringing home $15 per hour. If my tickets are just under $30, it took them about two hours of their life to make the money to come see my show. Why shouldn't I give them two hours too?
Social Security is an insurance policy. It's a terrible investment vehicle. Social Security has some great benefits. But it was never meant to be a savings plan. So we need to have a national debate. Should this 12.5 percent that we're contributing all go into a Social Security pool, or should half go into a mandatory savings plan?
We've also seen another future we could choose. First of all, we'd have the right to choose. It's an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance; in which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer screenings that could save our lives; in which we decide when to start our families.
Artists, writers and people in creative fields are entrepreneurs by necessity. Nobody gives them a paycheck or picks up their medical insurance. The ones who succeed learn to think and act like 'independent operators.' I think people who are technically 'employees' have to think this way as well. The company is not looking out for you.
At the heart of President Barack Obama's health-care plan is an insurance program funded by taxpayers, administered by Washington, and open to everyone. Modeled on Medicare, this 'public option' will soon become the single dominant health plan, which is its political purpose. It will restructure the practice of medicine in the process.
'Marriage' was not that big a deal, to be honest! I mean, it makes life easier for technical reasons: insurance, next-of-kin stuff, joint tax filing, etc. The real shocker was falling in love with the man I'm married to. I was 32 when we met, and I had really never been in a functional relationship before, had never been deeply in love.
Back in the late '90s, I put together a humorous newsmagazine program called 'The Awful Truth' for Bravo. We helped one guy get an organ transplant whose insurance company had refused to pay. I thought, if we could save a guy's life in a 10-minute segment on cable, what could we do if we devoted a whole movie to a whole bunch of people?
Disasters redistribute money from taxpayers to construction workers, from insurance companies to homeowners, and even from those who once lived in the destroyed city to those who replace them. It's remarkable that this redistribution can happen so smoothly and quickly, with devastated regions reinventing themselves in a matter of months.
The major economic policy challenges facing the nation today - pick your favorites among the usual suspects of low public and household savings, concerns about educational quality and achievement, high and rising income inequality, the large imbalances between our social insurance commitments and resources - are not about monetary policy.
When I worked at Microsoft, I got to go and visit a bunch of different companies. Probably a hundred different companies a year. You'd see all the different ways they'd work. The guys who did Ventura Publisher one day, and then United Airlines the next. You'd see the 12 guys in Texas doing Doom, and then you'd go see Aetna life insurance.
And there is no getting away from the fact - and this is a key point of discontent among many who are upset with the health care reform bill is it didn't go far enough. They say why isn't it in place now? Why don't I see some benefits now? All I see is the potential for losing insurance coverage, for premiums going up. That's hurting Obama.
DNA sequencing opens vast ethical issues. We shall be able to know who has defective genes. What will it mean when we can be sure we're not all born equal? Worked out, the implications will scare a lot of people. Insurance companies will not want to cover those with a genetic predisposition to illness, for example. Here lurk myriad lawsuits.
In September 2008 - as Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and AIG, the world's biggest insurance company, accepted a federal bailout - Senator John McCain of Arizona, in what was widely viewed as a political move, suspended his presidential campaign and called on Obama to rush back to Washington for a bipartisan meeting at the White House.
The development of a strategic plan for cancer prevention in medical schools that is supported by all stakeholders - including the medical community, government, the insurance industry, cancer advocacy groups and all those dedicated to cancer prevention - will be the key to inspiring patients to live lifestyles that will decrease cancer risk.
While Free Choice Vouchers didn't fulfill my vision of a health care system in which every American would be empowered to hire and fire their insurance company, they were a foothold for choice and competition and a safety valve for Americans whose employers are already forcing them to bear more and more of their family's health insurance costs.
Someone made me a Leaf Coneybear finger puppet. Someone made me a portrait of me on some chocolate. I'm keeping it. I daren't eat such a work of art. It's so unique and so fun that fans do that. It's incredibly flattering. I like it when people spend time on me. People don't spend the same amount of time on my brother who's an insurance broker.
In the very near future, I guarantee that the pictures you post on social media will affect your credit rating, health and auto insurance policies, and much more. It will all happen automatically. In a very real way, our rights and freedoms will be modulated by our metadata signatures. What's at stake, obviously, is the future of the human race!
Republican House members, including Tom Price, when he was still in the Republican House, sued HHS, suggesting that payment to insurance companies for cost-sharing exceeded the authority of HHS. That case was basically withdrawn when President Trump was elected, in hopes that the Affordable Care Act would be repealed - but we're back to the law.
Catastrophic health shocks do enormous damage to families both economically and otherwise, and are easy to insure, because nobody gets them on purpose. On the other hand, insurance policies that only treat certain catastrophic illnesses are hard to comprehend, especially of you are illiterate and unused to the legalistic nature of exclusions etc.
Unemployment insurance, abolishing child labor, the 40-hour work week, collective bargaining, strong banking regulations, deposit insurance, and job programs that put millions of people to work were all described, in one way or another, as 'socialist.' Yet, these programs have become the fabric of our nation and the foundation of the middle class.
Republicans who oppose Obamacare have a responsibility to show that they can do better - not return us to the days when insurance companies alone decided who to cover for what benefits at what price. Otherwise, they should move beyond the repeal fights of the past, accept Obamacare as the law of the land, and work with us to make real improvements.