The public option is not an option… it is a necessity.
The LA Times reports that insurance executives want to keep their right to drop sick people off the plan for stupid reasons. The industry calls this “rescission,” and Congressman Stupak of Michigan held hearings for testimony from victims of rescission and insurance executives.
A Texas nurse said she lost her coverage, after she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer, for failing to disclose a visit to a dermatologist for acne.
The sister of an Illinois man who died of lymphoma said his policy was rescinded for the failure to report a possible aneurysm and gallstones that his physician noted in his chart but did not discuss with him.
…snip…
Late in the hearing, Stupak, the committee chairman, put the executives on the spot. Stupak asked each of them whether he would at least commit his company to immediately stop rescissions except where they could show “intentional fraud.”The answer from all three executives:
“No.”
When insurance companies renege on their contractual obligation to their customers like this (and they do this a lot!), that’s not a market transaction, it’s a swindle. The government must make the market fair again by creating a public plan which will not cut off people just when they need the insurance. This public option will provide incentives for private insurance to actually pay for the care they agreed to pay for.
Even conservative pollsters know that the public wants a public plan, so it’s time to push legislators to write a strong public plan into law.
Recently, I heard Congressman Capuano say that as a public servant he needs to know from his constituents just how hard to push on healthcare reform. The Congress needs to push until everyone is covered, and there is a public option for people, so they won’t see their cancer treatments cut because they didn’t mention their previous acne treatments.
I thought the whole idea of a public option was to have something to fall back on. Therefore, if you’re cut off by your insurer you could immediately get picked up by the public program which would cover whatever it is your private carrier refused to. Please clarify.
Under all the reform plans that have been proferred up to now, insurers would be required to offer anyone insurance. See promotion note.
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p>The public option is intended to directly compete with private insurers, not soak up the bad risks the private insurers don’t want to take. That would be insane.
proferred by Democratic movers and shakers. The GOP has no clue.
That is, is it similar to public K-12 in that regard? I don’t mind requiring that everyone be covered; I object to being required to personally purchase a la Massachusetts. Although, to continue the education metaphor, if a private school kicks you out for disciplinary or academic reasons, your local public system has to take you.
… public options still require a premium on the part of the insured. Not free. The theory is, though, that it’d be reasonably competitive.
If the public plan is going to have competitive premia, then wouldn’t people who could pay for the public plan also afford one of the already-existing private plans? Is it that the public plan won’t pick and choose whom to cover? I would like a plan where you don’t pay any monthly rate, which would be 100% subsidized, but rather only pay copayments for actual doctor visits and medication.
The high cost of insurance premiums is due in large part to profit margins, CEO salaries, marketing etc..
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p>Medicare – overhead costs 3.1%
Investor owned Blues – overhead costs 26.5%
(International Journal of Health Services, 2005)
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p>A public option would be considerably cheaper.
… set their own premiums based on your risk profile, they can essentially fulfull their obligation to offer insurance for you, but get out of it by ‘making an offer you can’t accept’.
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p>Bug or feature?
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p>Same’s true with life insurance: young get good rates; old, not so much. I’ve seen nothing to indicate the ‘public option’ is proposed to be any different.
25 year olds have low cost, but low earnings.
50 year olds have medium cost, but high earnings.
75 year olds have high cost, but low earnings.
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p>Not segmenting by age is a boon for the younger baby boomers and seniors, but soaks young people who inherit all the debt our parents and grans left to us, along with crumbling infrastructure.
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p>If we just paid for it with taxes, then we’d completely separate risk (due to age or other condition) from income. Lumping ages does what essentially happened when SSI was rolled out: the current seniors got more than they put in. If the current health care plan/proposal survives 60 years, then we’d have the same thing: seniors got more than they put in, young people paid in extra early but got it back later in life. If the plan doesn’t last 60 years, then the young people to today will simply subsidize their grannies’ health care in addition to paying off the debt their grannies left ’em and rebuilding all the crumbling infrastructure on which their grannies delayed maintenance.
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p>Hmmm…
… to do it through taxes is that it becomes the ultimate mandate. One of the inefficiencies in a risk spreading system is when low risk people opt to do without and gamble. Rather than making a whole new set of fairness rules for premiums, we just make sure that our taxes are fair (which we should be doing anyway).
…I’d like to push this idea a little further though. Insurance corporations have incentives to interpret laws and contract provisions in ways to boost their profits (IIRC, corporations have a “duty” to their shareholders), and this is what has driven them to reward employees who creatively rescind insurance for policyholders who get cancer or other expensive illnesses. The profit motive drives them to this.
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p>But if we create a public plan that is not profit-driven, that does not have to generate higher share prices and higher CEO compensation, and put that public plan into the market place, then that public plan looks pretty good to consumers who could rightly worry about rescission, or some other new loophole invented by an ambitious insurance employee.
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p>The Congress can pass a guaranteed issue law, but capitalism makes corporations creative (sometimes in ways that harm the public), and that’s why beyond guaranteed issue, America needs a public plan to provide the right incentives.
The LAST thing government will do is to make the market fair, unintentionally or otherwise. Prices for the government “public option” will be set far below its true cost, and, hence, far below what the private sector could profitably sell insurance for.
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p>The bargain rates will drive businesses to drop coverage altogether, and send utilization of the public plan into orbit.
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p>These artificially low prices will drive the private sector health insurance business out of existence.
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p>But that’s what liberals really want.
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p>when was the last time liberals got what they really wanted nationally?
That if business seeing the public option then drops private plan for employees to save money. Wouldn’t you want a company to do that to save money and remain competitive? Is your concern for the poor worker now left with out coverage or the tax dollars to subsidize that employers workers? Who is the bad guy here the corporation from walking away, the government for offering a lower cost option, or the god damn employee who got sick and drove up the plan cost so we had to drop it? I am not sure what your point is bostonshepherd.
I think the reason for the public option being even considered is to not walk away and leave fellow Americans to fend for themselves, especially when the facts demonstrate that fair compensation eroding for decades as a result of employers trying to keep executive pay high to attract key talent and to stay competitive in a global economy. So for business the public option is or maybe an affordable option. Also in the discussion is the option to help small business that are having a hard time meeting the competitive nature of capitalism as a result of double digit increases in annual costs. Still seems like a win win if those who can afford to pay do so and those who can’t get covered to help lower the cost they inevitably do incur when they are forced by a health crisis to seek medical attention. Cost control is a public option on the table with rules. No one has suggested a Corporation who can pay should not pay. I think those are the details missing and the fear you and others feel that some how some one is going to get screwed and your stock, mutual fund, annuity, or small business will take it in the throat. Sounds like a self-interest motive.
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p>Your assumption first must suggest that a corporation or company was working in a moral and highly ethical way in the first place and not looking to just screw the country and the worker. That would be un-American maybe even fascist to think they would screw their own country to save a buck wow how sad.
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p>Well maybe we should tax the corporations and say to be an American Corporation and enjoy the opportunities being an American means you need to include in your overhead the cost of medical coverage for you and everyone else that work to keep America chugging along and guess what everyone pays something.
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p>Maybe if we look at it that way it just may work otherwise you just maybe Un-American.
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p>As Usual just my Opinion
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p>As Usual just my Opinion
Read The Best Antidote to the Public Option on 1Payer.net by by Nicholas Skala.