> But at least Republicans are offering something concrete.
I guess I missed that part. What I see possible is
1) nobody should lose insurance
2) money flow is even more complicated
3) when things go bad there’s even more ability to spread the blame (see 2)
4) nothing to lower health care costs
5) little reason to think health insurance costs will go down
6) insurance companies may be more “payment agents” than “insurance providers”
7) Republicans are co-owners so they’ll work with Ds to “fix” it (more tax $$$)
It’s better than Obamacare. It’s possible that it works out well. It’s also possible that the only “fix” in a few years is to either admit they were wrong and should have repealed the entire thing and start over, or go to single payer.
Here’s a concrete plan
1) repeal Obamacare
2) government-paid/single-payer high-catastrophic coverage. limit yearly & lifetime risks for insurers on any patient - a high limit, not what you or I would buy but still a cap to insurer’s risk per-patient
3) insurers can provide everything from full-care to below-high-catastrophic coverage. they don’t make a profit by moving money but by selling market-driven policies.
I’m not for single-payer in general, but limiting insurers’ yearly and lifetime risk makes pre-existing conditions coverage possible as well as making all calculations easier for the insurer. It’s not unreasonable for everyone to share risk (at the $million+ lifetime level) through taxes since we all have that possibility.
And the cost to taxpayers (in taxes and premiums) is not more than the mess we are getting into with the complex system being set up. And we get accountability, transparency and ability to modify government costs (adjust yearly/lifetime limits). The mess we are getting doesn’t allow us to easily see what money is doing when it goes through different paths and we have no idea what to adjust to make it more useful or less expensive.
There isn't such a thing.
That's not insurance, it's a payment plan. To qualify as "insurance" you first must have something to insure...(your good health)
There is, however, such a thing as a pre-existing condition exclusion clause, which allows the insurer to write a policy which will cover everything except the named condition for a certain period of time.
If there is no recurrence within say 18 months, the condition will then be covered. Maine has (had) such a provision.
The answer is complete repeal, interstate competition, carrier-funded high risk pools and cumulative tax-free health savings accounts.
Providers also need serious reforms to stop the non-transparency of third-party billing and gouging of insurers and cash patients to pay for all the bad-debt and "free healthcare"