President Obama promised people that they could keep their health insurance policies if they liked them. But a lot the policies that have been cancelled are not coming back.
Why not give the victims of these cancellations a choice. If they and their old insurance companies want to revive their old policies for a year, fine. But if that doesn’t happen, give the policy holders some more options. Why not offer them the opportunity to go on Medicare at a cost something like what they were paying before? We should also give them the option of joining the VA medical system–again for about the same cost they have been paying.
Between them the VA and Medicare could easily absorb the new people. And it would not be very expensive.
Of course, this would be a temporary solution. After a year these people would be booted out of the VA or off of Medicare. The cancellation notices would go out sometime around October 2014.
The only hitch i can see is that these people might complain about losing their Medicare of VA benefits next October. Or that other people might want the same deal, and demand that these government programs be dramatically increased.
That’s a price I’m willing to pay; we owe it to these people to do everything we can to make them whole.
How we care for one another is the measure of greatness – not the accumulation of wealth by neo robber barons.