According to a CBS News poll, 72% of Americans and 50% of Republicans favor a government run health insurance plan. The would seem to be bad for the Republican party, whose platform is against government running any businesses.
I suspect the reason Americans appear to support government health insurance is that there are problems with the current system and the only option to fix it that they have heard is a government-run plan. The main problem with the current system is health insurance is often tied to employment. If someone gets sick, they may be afraid to change jobs because they will not be able to keep their current insurance plan and may not be able to get a comparable new policy because of their newly preexisting condition.
I propose the Republicans admit that this is a huge problem and propose a law that prevents insurers from canceling someone’s policy on account of a job change. When a company writes a policy, they would free to take into account the same risk factors they do now, but they would have to continue offering insurance as long as the insured continued to pay his bills.
Demonizing a government plan really turns me off. A government plan would be okay, and it would do something to help the poor and those who aren’t diligent about paying their bills. A positive message about a minor change that could fix what bothers people about their current insurance would be much better.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
You already can continue your coverage if/when you lose your job, through COBRA. I have done so personally between jobs.
ReplyDeleteAs a [financial] conservative, I would propose the following [small-ish] proposals, if I were the Republicans:
- Allow people to deduct medial insurance costs on their taxes with no minimum spending required (to bring private insurance purchases on par with group plans through a business)
- Have a public option, but restrict availability to people employed and paying taxes, or looking for work, and their immediate families. Make sure the people benefiting are both working, and paying taxes under the law.
- Make the public plan pay rates determined by the negotiated rates paid by other insurance plans for services (no less, maybe a slight premium over the lowest negotiated rate). This prevents providers from being screwed by the government setting artificially low rates.
- Make sure the level of care covered by the public plan is sufficient but minimal. It should be there as a safety net, not a honeypot.
- If the public plan is free or subsidized, provide the same cost/subsidy as a tax credit for everyone not on the public plan (direct reduction to taxes owed after all calculations). That way everyone is getting the same benefit from the government, whether they are on the public plan or not.
Honestly, I think the public plan would be a bad idea, but if it got done with these provisions, it wouldn't be horrible. Then again, I think the chances of these provisions getting into the Obamanation plan are about as likely as me being the next president (ie: none).
You already can continue your coverage if/when you lose your job, through COBRA. I have done so personally between jobs.
ReplyDeleteRight, but the problem is if you get sick during that time. You can only stay on COBRA for 18 months. After that it’s hard to get "insurance" (in the normal sense of the word) against that sickness because the peril has already occurred. You can take a job at a large organization that has a large risk pool that will not be affected by the risk from your recent illness. A policy that encourages people to work at a large org for arbitrary reasons is inefficient. People ought to be able to work out a contract for health insurance independent of employment and get the same tax benefits as if it were bought through an employer.
CBJ new poll?
ReplyDeleteIs CBS a. conservative leaning
b. unbiased.
c. left leaning
d. extreme lunatic obama supporting
communist
I believe somewhere between C and D. I ive an a most liberal area and event the far left libs do not support this here. That makes me think that CBSswewed thr poll. I used to do that for various groups and skewing a poll is easy. Simply find and area code that is all a majority union or dem leaning minorty and make sure that 40% of the calls you get go out to that area and wou will get the numbers you want. This means that you can NEVER trust polls. They are lies everytime. Foxnews skews their polls just as NBC,CBS and ABC/CNN shkew theirs. THe only pollster thatis close ro being fair is Rasmussen. See I am what you would conider right leaning and yet I am honest when it comes to issues.