The suggestions of the people in Lehigh's column are all short-sighted and selfish and bureaucratic and inefficient. The owner of a small business shouldn't have to worry about what pool to join, or negotiating plans for his employees, or choosing employees based on their impact to their plan. Employees shouldn't be dependent on their boss's negotiating skills for their health insurance costs, or having to choose their jobs based on health care plans. Businesses should be freed to do their business, we should get the health insurance companies out of their hair forever.
And, Hurst, the guy promoting small business associations, can't be serious with his suggestion that associations could be required to accept every company that wants to join their association to avoid hurting companies with older workers. Of course as more older companies somehow found these prime associations and asked to join, the rates would be re-nogitated until the younger workers at younger companies simply jumped ship and joined a new organization hoping that the old guys don't find them again…it would be ridiculous and won't work.
It could also be beneficial to cities and towns, since healthcare costs take up a huge chunk of municipal budgets.
that McCain proposed would let cities and towns and states drop their health plans, it would let every company drop their health plans, stop having to worry about all of their employee’s health coverage, and focus on their business of state of town (they wouldn’t have to fire all their HR staff, they could afford to keep them on and re-assign them, to the cafeteria or something.)
…we need to move away from the assumption that health care follows from employment. I see this as one of the strongest arguments for single payer.
is that the argument you mean? Or just that unemployed people shouldn’t be hit extra hard for health insurance coverage? Whether the unemployed tend to need more hospital care or not, do they deserve it less? I think not, I think they deserve the same health care as the most saintly and hardworking people out there, or the most average.
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p>I think that Progressives balk at that, I think they think that only the fittest and most productive (them) deserve all modern health care offers, and the unfit and unproductive, well, hopefully they’ll be swept into the storm drains in a midnight rain or something. Do they want healthcare for all, or do they want to hold on to their cushy health plans?
Progressives want single payer. Even the ones (like me) who have “cushy health plans” want single payer that covers everybody. So I agree that employer-based health insurance is demonstrably a bad system in many ways and for many people. Blaming progressives for the persistence of that system is laughable.
I’ve blogged about this before, and many people refused to consider a less-than robust minimum standard plan for everyone, they refused to give up any quality, they just wanted that cushiness to extend to everyone. And that is what is so expensive and offensive about single payer. Progressives insist on bundling in abortion coverage and IVF (mandated now in Massachusetts), effectively making the proposal dead in the water from the get go. And you never consider the transition either, you just “want single payer” like it’s the farm in Of Mice And Men. You give it a poison pill because the prioroties of funding drug research and IVF and contraception are higher than helping poor people that are sick. Without reducing it’s coverage to catholic necessiity and without a smooth transition, you won’t be getting to the farm, the last thing you hear will be the dogs barking and the Democrats will move on without the progressives.
how defenders of the current system all think that a single-payer system would cost more. Just look at the costs that would be removed: advertising, agents of denial and recission, actuaries, boards of directors, massive quantities of mail describing what was paid for, and what was not, and why.
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p>On the provider side, the current billing overhead would shrink to a tiny fraction of its current burden.
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p>Employers who now expend large amounts of manpower on trying to keep the costs of health insurance in check could say goodbye to it.
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p>Everybody wins, except for the insurance companies and their representatives in Congress. Of course, they deserve to be losers.
I’m not a defender of the current system, I favor a system like the French have, where people buy supplemental plans called “mutuals” to cover things that aren’t paid for by the government, but everyone is covered by the government for most basic medicine.
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p>I agree that a single payer would cost less for the reasons you cite, which I also cite as the reason to ditch the employer negotiated plans, but it could still be “so expensive” because it will still seek to maximize research funding and mandated coverage. And my plan doesn’t completely ditch private insurance companies, who seem to be the ones stopping single payer (As well as the conservatives who don’t want to be funding abortion and heart transplants for everybody), since it leaves them in the mix, both in a clerical role where they collect premiums from the government and pay hospitals but are completely mandated and uniform in their coverage decisions, and also as sellers of supplemental plans for people that want coverage for heart transplants or abortion or IVF or fertility treatments or prescription drugs.
Otherwise, see Kirth’s response to your terrible misreading of what Progressives want.
that they are wussies, they should stop hanging on to their negotiated cushy health plans and agree to jump in the big pool with everybody else? Put their money where their mouth is?
When there is a big pot to jump into, that would be reasonable. As of now, there is no such pot, so it’s a ridiculous proposition.
The water is fine, jump in, get an individual plan from the Connector and tell your company it can drop their plan and stop worrying about negotiating with insurance companies.
That’s always the case, of course. Remember the Bill Cosby record:
Since the pool of state employees is large enough to be a group in the various private insurance plans offered to them, why not bring this pool into a ‘public option’ plan? Allow the self-employed, unemployed, and small businesses to buy in also. Small businesses could offer their employees vouchers that they could put toward their public option premiums or toward any other plan of their choice.
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p>The only objection I can see is, as mentioned above, employees who are younger or work in younger organizations will resent being put in the same pool as older workers. This could be addressed with some differentials based on age, but not as extreme as they are now with private insurance.