Finally, the health insurance reform debate has graduated from fictitious death panels to something that really matters: Should we have a public option that can compete with the public plan? I think so.
One of the massive problems we face are escalating health insurance premium. Ours went from $450 four years ago to $1000 now. That's per person per month. We can't afford premiums that double every four years. That's as big a reason to reform the system as any.
A public plan would have lower administrative costs because it wouldn't pay fat cat bonuses, and it wouldn't spend so much time trying to figure out what care it could deny. We know this from the Medicare experience.
Co-ops don't get us there, I think. Just setting up health care coops -- groups that form a nonprofit to provide care within a network of doctors, hospitals, etc. -- is too difficult, too cumbersome, and is likely to trap people in small networks. Those of us who need to see a doctor outside of the coop will be out of luck. Coops won't really compete with private insurance because they will be unattractive to most people.
Bob Herbert in today's NY Times is right when he says there's a problem when the health insurance companies and pharmaceutical manufacturers are happy with the reform we're headed towards. No way to force down insurance costs, no way to negotiate drug discounts for Medicare -- they're getting off scott free, to continue to do what they've been doing all along -- milking the system without having to change their ways one bit.
Indeed, health insurers will get millions of healthy individuals who are required to enroll, while not giving up a single thing.
A public option changes this dynamic. It is the only way consumers can really win. It will drive down the cost of premiums so the private plans can compete with the public plans. There's simply no other way to get there.
If you agree, please speak up. Jennifer
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Thanks for posting this, Jennifer. I read Bob Herbert and reading you - I'm convinced. Now what does it take to convince those who can make this happen?
ReplyDeleteHi, Rosalind. Nice to see you. You've probably already done this, but for all of you who care, please write and call your members of Congress NOW! Jennifer
ReplyDeleteI do agree. Do you have some sort of form letter I can send to my congressman and senators.... I think we are talking a generation to get us to universal public coverage. I am not schooled in economics or politics, however, I have Crohn's since my adolecence, and I have always said that the straw that will break capitalism's back is when medical advances get to the point where we have to daily choose who lives and who dies based on how much it costs. Profit and Medicine is a combination that is incompatible once medicine advances to the point where the money people decide who lives and who dies. We are there now on some levels, but when it gets to the point where the entire culture connects with the injustice of it, there will be revolution if justice and fairness is not legislated.
ReplyDeleteThe money still overpowers common sense. Sad...