A state legislator in Pennsylvania left office after battling assault allegations. But because he served in the legislature for 10 years, he steps down with a sweeet package of benefits.
After a tumultuous nine months of seeing his stellar reputation as a lawmaker and Iraq War veteran tarnished by sexual assault and domestic violence allegations, state Rep. Nick Miccarelli is about to leave his House seat with a generous benefits package intact.
Miccarelli’s 10-year run as a member of the state House of Representatives representing a portion of Delaware County ends on Friday.
By sticking around to complete his fifth term of office, Miccarelli becomes eligible for retirement benefits unheard of in the private sector.
Miccarelli – and 22 other departing House members this year who served 10 years or more – will receive medical, dental, vision and prescription insurance for the rest of their lives. Their current or future children can receive them as well until they reach 26 years old…
Miccarelli and the other retiring House members’ annual contribution for their insurance coverage is just 1 percent of their final year’s salary. That 1 percent for departing members this year amounts to $872.
Taxpayers will pick up the rest of the yearly tab: $11,332 for single person coverage and $26,799 for a married couple, according to information obtained through a Right to Know request filed with the House. Departing members with dependent children cost even more.
Additionally, retiring members and their spouses with 10 years of service also are eligible for long-term care insurance. The cost for that benefit is $842 a year, according to information provided by the House. Senators leaving after eight years of service get similar health and long-term care benefits.
For Miccarelli, who got married in February, the annual cost to taxpayers will be $27,641 for his and his wife’s health benefits.
Additionally, Miccarelli is eligible for a state pension. Based on ballpark estimates calculated by PennLive, the maximum annual annuity he would receive is $32,311, assuming he doesn’t retire before the age of 50.
Contrary to popular belief, members of the US Congress do not get 100% coverage of their healthcare costs, but they do have excellent benefits.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Congress has EXCELLENT Health Coverage … and so they have NO CLUE and are SELFISH. Sickens me.
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Rich members of Congress like Pelosi ($100+ million) dont need the salary oR the health benefits, but they nonetheless take everything they can get.
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An Atlantic article How Did Members of Congress Get So Wealthy? lists Pelosis worth as only 74 million
Only.
Ha ha ha.
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I believe politicians should all receive Trump’s low cost insurance since it doesn’t cost or cover very much. Maybe living with that garbage would encourage real insurance for the rest of us. [Medicare for All] It would be especially good for politicians if it doesn’t cover pre-existing conditions. Trump brags about how much better his plan is than Obamacare so he needs to experience his great stuff first hand. He wouldn’t like paying out healthcare costs from his personal money. It’s fine for the rest of us to do that, however. Dang, we can’t even deduct medical expenses now because he signed his ‘great tax cut for the middle class’.
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The only confusion about the Trump plan for health insurance is that it doesn’t exist and never will.
The problem with “repeal and replace” was that the Republicans knew they could repeal but they never had a replacement.
They just want to take away health insurance from millions of people and see what happens next.
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The only wealthy democracy without universal health care: USA! USA! USA! The richest economy on earth with the most expensive non healthcare non system. Almost 30 millions uninsured, millions more with inadequate high deductible garbage insurance. By some miracle we do have Medicare, Medicaid, the VA and what’s left of the ACA. The GOP/right wingers/libertarians are adamantly opposed to universal health care. They say we can’t afford it, there’s not enough money and it would lead to loss of freedom or socialism. The GOP/right wingers/libertarians say that those other countries have death panels, let old people die, lack freedom of choice, blah, blah, blah, and other lies and myths. So here we are, it’s almost 2019 and thousands of Americans die every year from lack of health insurance and many hundreds of thousands more go bankrupt from medical costs. This does not happen in those other democracies. When is enough, enough? We do have universal gun care, what a country.
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HBO recently had a documentary on called “Bleed Out.” Everyone should see it. It tells the unfortunate story of a retired teacher that injures her hip. Her son documented her journey full of blunders and blame. The third leading cause of death in the USA that the AMA does not want us to know is medical malpractice. The medical lobbyists have made it almost impossible for victims to sue and win a settlement. See it and weep! https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-05-03/medical-errors-are-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-the-us
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And then, of course, there are all the doctors who act as little more than salesmen for medical procedures and pharmaceuticals (eg, opioids)
The American medical system is a mess.
One of the greatest advantages of single payer system overseen by the government is that it would force doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies to clean up their act.
And of course, the health insurance companies would have to close up shop, which would be a loss to no one except their CEOs and shareholders.
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By the way, the American Medical Association and Big Pharma will never allow single payer to go through.
There is just too much money at stake for doctors and pharmaceutical companies.
The President of the AMA, Barbara McAneny is on the record as claiming that single payer would not pay enough.
She said We need a payment system that the country can afford.
Translation: We need a payment system that will afford me and other greedy bastards like me the continuation of our oppulent lifestyles.
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SDP,
Did you change your handle from “SomeDamPoet” to “SoneDAMpoet”? What’s with the “sone”?
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Doctors in other countries are not paid on scale that is similar to what American doctors expect. They manage in Europe to live well and do their jobs.
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retired teacher: The AMA doesn’t really want people to be healed. Cures for diseases would take money away from the Western Medical Establishment. We are all walking ATM’s for medicine.
Read about Royal Rife. He discovered a cure for cancer in the 1930’s. His success was verified by researchers who followed his cure for stage 4 cancer patients. The AMA is very busy declaring that this whole thing was a hoax.
…………..
In 1933, an American inventor named Royal R. Rife invented an audio-frequency emitting device that was capable of sending frequencies into a person’s body that would destroy microorganisms found to be casually associated with cancer.rife machine
Though the theory may sound more like science fiction than real life, it’s supported by the repeated research of numerous highly respected scientists.
Unfortunately, like so many alternative cancer cures, Rife’s machines were discredited by industry elites, who regarded Rife’s work as pseudomedicine. As a result, Rife machines were never put into widespread use by mainstream medicine.
It is believed by many alternative health practitioners that the medical industry’s rejection of Rife’s machines was caused by a conspiracy involving the American Medical Association, the Department of Public Health, and other elements of “organized medicine.”
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Carol
I don’t know about the particular case of Rife, but I certainly would not rule it out before looking at the evidence the way the American medical establishment has a way of doing.
There are lots of examples of their dismissing stuff without even considering it.
A good example is probiotics, which they are just now starting to recognize the value of after denying for decades that it had any value at all.
And the American medical establishment still denies the reality of chronic lyme disease, despite the evidence for it’s existence. And even in the case of recently acquired lyme, there are still many doctors who believe the tests for it are reliable, which they are NOT.
I had Lyme disease for nearly a year because the idiot doctors I saw (about 10 of them at three different supposedly top notch hospitals in Boston) refused to give me antibiotics despite the fact that I knew I was bit by a tick and could trace all my classic Lyme symptoms to the time of the tick bite. The doctors refused because I had originally had a ten day regimen of antibiotics which they claimed would have killed all the Lyme causing bacteria and their test kept coming back negative, which I later learned meant absolutely nothing.
Luckily, I finally got the name of a doctor in a Lyme forum on line who prescribed me two months of antibiotics based on my symptoms alone and sure enough, my symptoms began to clear up in a fairly short time. But I put up with the disease for nearly a year because of the idiots I was dealing with. And the hospitals got thousands of dollars for unnecessary tests that they performed CAT scans, neck exrays and all other sort of crap that had nothing to do with what I TOLD them I had: Lyme disease) Those quacks should all have had their medical licenses revoked.
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SoneDAM poet: [I don’t like your ‘new’ name.]
I was in a natural history program at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD for four and a half years. Due to alternative medicine work my hearing had improved and I had shrunk a brain tumor by 2 mm. This is not a lot but these brain tumors are very strong and NEVER shrink.
I was given a fake evaluation by a psychiatrist at NIH and was thrown out of the study for being severely mentally ill. I was SO mentally ill that they predicted that without continuing psychiatric help, they were afraid that I would become a treat to myself or others.
I took this fake evaluation to a licensed psychologist in my area. He wrote up a counter evaluation and totally dismissed everything on the NIH report. He said that I was healing and that the Western medical establishment didn’t recognize that. I faxed this new evaluation to the head of NIH Dr. Francis Collins, the psychiatrist, the head researcher in my study and a woman in charge of public relations in NINDS, the neurological unit in which I had been a patient. I never received an apology nor got a comment back.
This is how NIH gets rid of patients they don’t want in studies. Give them a fake psychiatric evaluation and tell them they are too mentally ill to remain the study. At least this is what happened in my case.
I was so distraught that I couldn’t sleep decently for months. I believe that cures for many diseases have been made but stopped by our medical professionals who didn’t want to loose money on cures.
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Oops
I meant SaneDAMPoet lest sone think I am insane
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SoneSaneDAM,
My next-door nbr had arthritis in his fifties which he & wife (a pharma scientist) were convinced connected to long-prior Lyme [‘cured’ by a couple rounds of antibiotics] despite neg test results. Dg was complicated by ‘real’ arthritis/ knee replacements in his forties stemming from hisch/ coll basketball plus decades of competitive biking. But competing facts should have weighed heavier: for 30 yrs he’d worked from home/ tended lawn/ walked dogs/ biked in our high-Lyme- occurrence area. the usual arthritis remedies N/G. He debilitated: wife connected him to a Lyme specialist from work, who put him [off the books] on a portable hep for 8mos’ 24/7 intravenous antibiotics. Recovery was close to 100% & he is once again phys active.
Coincidentally [not], when they were still in their 40’s, another nbr— same biking team– languished w/ neg tests & doc refusals. When Bell’s Palsy showed up, his wife, a nurse, became bulldog & got him approp treatment.
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Joe,
Until the people really learn about and accept a universal, single payer system preferably by learning how other modern democracies set up their healthcare systems – they will always be duped by the false threat “We’ll turn into a totalitarian communist, socialist state with big bad government deciding our fates!”
It is the people, and ONLY the people and their horrible experiences with the current for-profit system that will push our system over the edge and into a single payer system. Plain and simple. It’s up to the people. It’s up to us, including but certainly not limited to all those conservative Christians and Southerners who hate government.
Free market solutions are never the answer to what is a human, civil, and birthright: healthcare.
Of course, in a single payer system, one has to manage it efficiently and also makes sure that it gets paid for equitably. I for one would be delighted to give up my $4,000 tax refund this year if I knew it were truly going toward a Finnish or French-like system.
It’s disgusting people like Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul who vow to never have such a system and do everything they can to prevent it. Yet their health insurance is Lamborghini insurance for the rest of their useless lives . . . .
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Sounds like we’re the ones with death panels.
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Congress has an approval rating lower than Charles Manson. Yet these people have a 90+% re-election rate. If paying salaries and benefits and pensions to these people is a problem, we are free to vote them out. But we don’t.
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Diane please don’t scrub till you laugh at this one –
The “Pampered Pup” of the anti gun legion didnt do his homework on Harvard!
Everyone mocked Ingraham for her comment but she did congrats to him for getting into Harvard although he was rejected from several public schools in the University of California system.
BUT BUT here is the funny part –
“David Hogg is heading to Harvard despite an SAT score of 1270. The bottom 25% at Harvard have an average SAT score of 1460,” College Fix noted.
But still, the left wing media swooned after Hogg announced that he was headed to the Ivy League school in Cambridge, Mass.
“Thank you all for the well wishes, I’ll be attending Harvard in the fall with a planned major in Political Science,” he said.
BUT BUT HERE IT COMES FOLKS!
But it looks like Hogg might have to change his plans.
First noted by internet sleuth Kathy Zhu, Harvard does not offer a major in political science. Hogg must not have done his homework.
MAKE IT A GREAT DAY!
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jscheidell,
At Harvard, there is a major in “Government,” which is the same as political science:
https://handbook.fas.harvard.edu/book/government
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Hogg is going to Harvard as far as I know. This poor kid forgets to dot an i or cross a t and the right wing trolls cackle and howl like demented hyenas. Hogg does not have access to the nuclear codes, that would be Trump who makes gaffes, grammatical, syntax and national security mistakes multiple times during the day. I guess js is a perfect human being who never makes mistakes or errors. Will you right wingers stop smearing and attacking David Hogg, enough already.
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Dude. He’s 19. He may still be trying to figure out what he’s going to do in life. So what if Harvard doesn’t have a “political science” major. This kid is going to do amazing things, no matter WHAT his major in college was.
And WHY does someone in an education blog think it’s a good idea to trash a kid? You jschidell are a creep.
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I suspect that jschidell is proud he is a creep. After all, Trump is proud he is the greatest, smartest, most successful, most stable creep in history.
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For a comparison. I taught for thirty years in one public school district in California and when I retired I left with no medical and never had any dental coverage and still don’t have any dental coverage.
I’ve read that most public school teachers that retire after enough years to qualify also leave with no medical. I’ve only heard of UTLA teachers negotiating health care as a part of their retirement package and that might explain why the autocrats are spending so much money in California to destroy UTLA and replace that public school system with a non-unionized private sector charter school industry where the teachers are paid thousands less with no benefits.
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I know of just a few urban districts in Tennessee that make health care a part of retirement. The majority will have to fend for ourselves when it comes to Medicare supplement.
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There was a teacher at my school who only retired when he was 83, because he needed the insurance. True story, and not a total outlier in my state.
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How long did that teacher teach who retired at 83? I knew one teacher that didn’t retire until he was 73. He said once he’d only retire after he didn’t enjoy the job anymore. He taught for about 45 years and when he retired, he got a raise because at 42 or 43 years by his age, the CALstrs formula had him earning more than 100 percent of his pay.
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Altho PA state legislators’ retirement benefits– and salaries– are clearly on the overgenerous side, excellent retirement benefits in exchange for longtime public service used to be a thing. Remember? The main issue in PA appears to be the ease with which legislators can accomplish it. Ten years’ service is a pittance, especially in a state where incumbents have been winning reelection at rates of 80-90% for decades. That’s about gerrymandering. PA is operating on a court-imposed district map for the moment, but isn’t likely to change those laws before the 2020 census.
Meanwhile the case in point is outrageous, w/ colleagues circling the wagons to ensure this malfeasant got his 10th yr in just before the law catches up with him.
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Imagine (as a thought experiment) if, rather than placing our tax dollars into a giant anonymous national fund, every body knew what their individual tax contribution was being spent on. Each tax payer would be provided with an itemized receipt that lets him/her know exactly what their tax contribution is buying. Some people would help subsidize housing for the poor, or repair pot holes, or pay for Trump’s body guards when he’s golfing, or pay for part of a cruise missile, or pay this congressman’s healthcare. $27,641 of my tax dollars straight to his families health care for life! Hmmm. That pretty much uses up my entire tax contribution for the year.
I could think of some good reasons not to do this, but it would certainly bring accountability, and in many cases outrage, home.
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Here’s how much members of Congress pay for their health insurance
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/25/heres-how-much-members-of-congress-pay-for-their-health-insurance.html
“If the Affordable Care Act is repealed, members of Congress have a fallback plan. They would be able to return to the FEHBP.” Twenty million other Americans won’t. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/members-congress-health-care/
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