Posted on 11/23/2008 9:17:34 AM PST by John Semmens
Two industry trade groups, America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association announced that they are willing to accept a government requirement that insurers accept all applicants if, in exchange, the government forces everyone to buy insurance.
“People with pre-existing health problems aren’t really buying insurance, they’re asking that someone else pay their medical bills,” said industry spokesman William Welsh. “The only way to make this work is to require people who don’t think they need insurance to buy it anyway. This will enable us to cover the losses on the ill from profits on the healthy.”
Welsh rejected the characterization that this plan is “socialized medicine.” “It’s not as if the government would be taking over,” Welsh explained. “Private insurers would still be running things. All the government would do is compel everyone to buy our product. It’s a ‘win-win’ situation for everybody.”
Physician-legislator, Representative Ron Paul (R-Texas) criticized the proposal. “Okay, so they’re following the Mussolini model rather than the Stalin model,” Paul said. “But I wouldn’t say that this semi-socialized medicine is cause for Americans to rejoice. Insurance industry profits may be secured, but the quality and cost of health care will still be headed in the wrong direction.”
This new position taken by the insurance industry is seen to greatly increase the odds for passage of President-Elect Barack Obama’s health care plan.
(Excerpt) Read more at azconservative.org ...
Will anyone ever advocate a return to Fee-For-Service Medicine? I mean, seems to me that if they did, you’d see costs for almost everything plummet to much more manageable levels. Who is out there advocating for Free Markets in Medicine?
Or you could just require everyone to deposit 10% of their income in a tax-protected Health Savings Account. Each individual would have full control over how the money is spent.
Corporations will be the biggest lobbyists for national health care. Just wait and see.
Struggling to find the satire.
I was forced to buy flood insurance as a condition of my mortgage despite the fact that I live on a lake above the dam. (the lake is the flood prone area “pre flooded”)
Of course they will! It's too hard to compete when every other nation has some type of socialized medicine. Factor in the worker's compensation portion that goes to pay for healthcare of injured workers, and corporations pay a lot more for healthcare here than anywhere else.
Didn't Toyota just announce in the past year that they were moving plants to Canada due to healthcare costs? It's not like Canada has much cheaper labor and other operating costs.
Change is coming, and we'd better figure out just what kind of change we can live with.
that's a well- stated concept for once.
The government can't compel people to buy something they don't have the money for. The only way to get universal coverage if for the government to pay for the insurance of people who can't afford it.
The only way they can do that is to take money from the people who can and then they'll be left that much less able to buy good insurance for themselves. How is that a "win" for them?
They have no choice in one sense. They will comply or be driven from business. The rats will try to replicate their local model on a national level. The local model is an unholy alliance between select businesses, labor, and rat politicians to pass tax increases. Businesses are guaranteed contracts with high labor rates passed to consumers. Nationally, this model is tricky because of trade agreements and the much larger impact on the economy. The rats want to impose higher labor costs on industry. Industry will go along if they are shielded from the competition from lower labor rates. Tariffs can be used to shield businesses from competition. However, small to moderate size businesses are a different issue. These businesses will not be able to compete with high labor costs. Overall, investors and consumers will be shafted by this new unholy alliance.
Ollie North had the best idea years ago, allow physicians to deduct the cost of free care from their taxes. Set a limit of 15 %, something like that.
“Who is out there advocating for Free Markets in Medicine?”
Well, as much as they’re trashed around here...The answer is Ron Paul and possibly Allen Keyes.
They already are. Back in the 1990s during the Hillarycare debate, the CEO of Chrysler was claiming that Canada’s “free” health care put their American plants at a competitive disadvantage. They conveniently omitted the fact the the savings on health premiums are more than offset by our higher taxes.
Healthcare cost isn’t Toyota’s rationale for expanding in Canada, it’s our cheap dollar that’s giving us an edge. Health premiums in the USA may be steep, but here in Ontario that “free” health care costs individuals $750 a year in a tax they call a “premium”, the employer pays a 5% payroll tax, we pay 13% sales tax and middle-income taxpayers have a marginal rate in the neighbourhood of 40% (and that was AFTER several rounds of tax cuts- we used to pay >50%). That isn’t the end of it, though, because the “free” health care barely covers the basics. Most employers still pay premiums to private insurers for things like ambulance service, drugs, dental etc.
It could be worse - you could live in an area that didn’t offer flood insurance, then get flooded out.
This gives the hospitals and the doctors an excuse to refuse service or shove the cost onto the government when patients show up with policies that are not in force due to unpaid premiums or failure of the patient to actually buy the guaranteed coverage.
Then you have the problem of scofflaws who do not buy coverage until the moment they need it.
"OOPS, I'm pregnant- time to buy a policy".
Then the government will have to decide for us all how much coverage is to be required by the uninsured. Now we are talking about the equivalent of assigned risk car insurance for the poor who cannot "afford" the premium. Since the carriers are dependent on the government to determine coverage, then they will have to negotiate how much premium to offer the product for.
ACORN heath care anyone?
Insurance companies are the only component of the health care industry that is making money.
They are also the main culprit in the skyrocketing cost of health care.
Now, employees move from job to job, go through periods of unemployment, or work for themselves, or do contract work, etc., and that presents a great problem with healthcare.
And there's no easy answer, but at any given time, someone who paid into health insurance for decades could find himself uninsured when he needs it, and that totally sucks.
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