Would you say that Workers Compensation is a commie idea? Employers are required to purchase workers compensation insurance, so why can't they be required to either pay a portion of health insurance or pay the state for medical insurance? The alternative is that the burden of all these uninsured people falls solely on the state and hence the taxpayer.
Right now my taxes are paying for all these uninsured patients that are crowding out and forcing shut all the emergency rooms. Federal law mandates that emergency rooms must treat everyone that comes in, so why should that burden fall solely on the taxpayers and hospitals? As long as medical care is mandated by the federal government, I think it is bad stewardship not to see that the burden imposed by that law is not spread out to businesses, individuals, insurance companies and the state.
Emergency Rooms are a very inefficient way to treat many patients. They're expensive to maintain and offer no preventative care. But the uninsured use them as their primary doctor. So you get a lot of crowding and folks with conditions that have gotten out of control, but could have been easily cured if caught earlier.
I'd take this whole insurance thing completely the opposite direction, where employers are concerned, and just make it flat illegal for an employer to provide any coverage of any kind; ALL insurance should be individualy contracted for between the insurer and the insured. PERIOD. You won't find home or auto insurance in your corporate benefit package; why should it be any different for medical, dental, vision, etc?
Insurance providers angle to land business with big companies so they can keep a larger pool of customers more steadily. In return, they give lower rates than you and I could if we went out on our own to buy the same coverage. Well, part of the reason we'd have to pay more, is because the insurer has pressure to make up the price break they gave to the corporate plan buyers. If there WERE no corporate plans, the insurers could even out the costs and we could all get the plan of our choice for something between what we'd pay privately, today, and what company plans cost.
From an Economics 101 perspective, forcing insurers to deal individually with tens of millions of customers instead of dealing with customers through the H.R. departments of tens of thousands of companies, exponentiates the customer base. More buyers, places demand for the product of each insurer on more precipitous footing. With the customers now dealing in person with their insurers, it forces the insurers to compete head-to-head for each individual policy. Instead of landing 20,000 customers at a time by signing deals with big companies, an insurer will have to compete for EACH of those 20,000 customers ONE by ONE; which will drive down the cost of insurance for everyone.
Of course, that makes so much sense that no nanny-state govrnement would EVER let it happen.
That's insurance to cover damages to the person that are caused by the job. It includes health care coverage for job related disease and injury.
" Right now my taxes are paying for all these uninsured patients that are crowding out and forcing shut all the emergency rooms."
So all you're advocating is paying more taxes.
"I think it is bad stewardship not to see that the burden imposed by that law is not spread out to businesses, individuals, insurance companies and the state."
The bad stewardship award goes to the clowns that engineered the expensive over regulated litigative med system in the first place.
Worker's comp is one of if not the biggest scams in CA. You think opening the floodgate that invites every poor person from Anchorage to Rio de Janeiro to come here to get their hemorrhoids removed is a good plan? Right now, all states are bound by the USSC decision. Making health insurance free in this state just invites those who are dependent on emergency rooms, which are only required to treat life-threatening cases, to come here and get every damn hangnail and runny nose treated.