If I was going to copy someone else’s homework at least the assignment would be in on time. So it makes me wonder why Hillary Clinton took so long to get us her version of a health care plan when it is so obviously a copy of Edward’s plan. After all I do not have a fleet of interns and an overflowing campaign war chest and I managed to get my health care plan out in a little over a month. And I learned to blog and write limited HTML at the same time and held down a 70 hour a week job and taught my teenager to drive. What was so tough about copying John Edwards’ health plan that it took this long? It must not have been that high on her agenda.
Actually, Edwards’ plan comes from Sen. Ron Wyden’s plan (D Oregon): http://wyden.senate.gov/...
And I liked Wyden’s plan slightly better than Clinton’s. It does not attach health care to work—you buy the insurance directly from the health insurance company. Also it was more locally operated.
Clinton’s plan, like Edwards’ plan, revolves around mandating that everyone in America purchase health care coverage from insurance companies. This would force people who are not covered to buy a plan. These candidates give their word that the plans would be forced to offer reasonable rates by competition. Even though Massachusetts has not been able to achieve this. The insurance companies would be forced to take any patient who pays the premium—no cherry picking. They would not be allowed to drop the patient, and "prior condition" becomes a historical phrase.
The private companies would be forced to compete with government Medicare plans that you could now elect to join. Or you could join the plan that the US Congress members have. If you can not afford the plans the federal government will give you a subsidy (Edwards) or a tax credit (Clinton). So you have to pay up front and get reimbursed at the end of the year. What I said about tax subsidies for the purpose of purchasing health insurance still stands.
Federal subsidies—Our tax dollars given to insurance agencies for the poor who could not otherwise purchase insurance. In shorter words tax money to insurance companies. Anyone suggesting this should be scratched from your list of possible candidates immediately. We know that insurance wastes 31 cents of every dollar given to it. So you will convert the health care system for the poor from a system that wastes 5% (Medicaid) to one that wastes 31%. And the extra money the tax payer spends goes directly into the insurance company’s pocket. Corporate welfare. How will this decrease the amount the rest of us pay in insurance? Some candidates included in this group want state taxes to cover the poor instead of federal. Same idea.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
If you pay over a certain limit in one year, say you developed cancer, then at a certain set limit you would get another tax credit, saving you from bankruptcy. The insurance will be portable, meaning you can take it to your next job. Obama’s health care system is similar except his is voluntary and not mandatory.
So here are the problems:
1.) There may be a ceiling to what you can pay in one year but what if your deductibles and co-pays add up to more than you actually made in one year. How would you get reimbursed for that? How would you live until tax return time?
2.) See above about tax money going to insurance companies.
3.) Michael Moore’s movie was not about the uninsured. It was about the insured who were denied coverage for their health problems for various dubious reasons. Some of the issues like "prior condition" denials are addressed but the insurance companies have a great number of reasons to deny care. Are these going to be addressed?
4.) The poor in Hillary’s plan have to pay up front and then get a tax credit.
But tax credits mostly benefit higher income Americans. And families grappling with skyrocketing prices, and no controls on costs, will likely choose the cheapest, high deductible plans that provide the worst coverage. The sad outcome may be seen in a report earlier this year by the American Academy of Pediatrics that families with high deductible health plans are far more likely to put off needed care, including immunizations and recommended treatment, due to the cost. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
5.) What in these plans actually does make the health care plans cheaper? The health insurance agencies have been competing against each other of years and yet the price has doubled in the past 10 years and the quality of the insurance has collapsed. This is a method that clearly is not working. What on Earth makes these candidates think it will work better for them? In fact any time federal monies are involved the cost generally goes up. Take a look at college prices after the federal loan program.
6.) Clinton was asked in an interview on her website http://www.hillaryclinton.com/... how her plan encourages health care to become more preventative and less like "sick care". In classic Hillary style, she rambles on about how this needs to be everyone’s responsibility. She is a true politician. She talks for a good 5 minutes and says absolutely nothing. The real answer: "It is everyone’s responsibility so it is not mine. I didn’t put it in the plan."
Edwards, at a fiery speech on his website http://www.youtube.com/...
announced that if Congress did not pass his health care plan when he became president, he would cancel Congress’s health care plan until all Americans had health coverage. I like the idea but unfortunately, the president can only make a suggestion to Congress. Congress would actually have to pass the bill canceling their own insurance for this to happen. By the way the same is true for any health care plan proposed by a president.
Clinton's campaign dubbed the new proposal the American Health Choices Plan, and the candidate used the words ‘choice’ and or ‘choose’ more than a dozen times in her 45-minute address.
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/...
I find the name American Health Choices Plan ironic. In reality the American people are not being offered a choice. All these plans are essentially the same plan with some minor tweaks here and there. And all of them give a financial gift to the malignant health insurance industry. There really isn’t a health care debate going on in this country. The GOP isn’t offering anything meaningful on this front and the "top tier" Democrats are all offering the same bill.
So here is a sample of what you aren’t going to be offered as an American:
- Mike Gravel’s voucher plan. I do not think much of this plan but it does have some merits. Gravel’s idea is that the Federal government should send you so many dollars worth of vouchers every year for health care and you can save them from year to year. This would encourage people to shop around and to ask what things cost. This would work to drive down health care cost in America. But what happens if you get a bad disease or accident in the first year? You are pretty much on your own. And how would that encourage people to go to the doctor early instead of too late for illness? How would that encourage us to have better habits? This scheme could be part of a larger health care bill but I do not think it stands by itself.
- Dennis Kucinich’s HR 676: This is basically Medicare for all. Our clinic actually dropped Medicare, (as did many others) because the reimbursement did not cover the cost of seeing the patient in many instances and because they were actually abusive to the physicians. Our hospital sees Medicare, as do most hospitals, at a loss. They make up for that loss, by the way, by billing your health care plan more for your hospitalization. If they are all Medicare what happens then? Of course there are long lines, and rationing to discuss. But also the further away from you the decisions about your health get made, the less control you have over those decisions. The federal government is pretty far away from you in the decision making game. The only way it could be further is if the government decided to out source the decision making to some guy in India named "Bob".
- HR 1200, The lesser known Kucinich/Conyers bill: This is similar to HR 676 but much more fleshed out and the better of the 2 bills in my opinion. This bill buts the decision making power at the local level and not at the Federal level. It is otherwise still single-payer medicine.
- Multipayer—This is the system the French have. http://www.dailykos.com/... Incidentally, despite the fact that single payer and socialized medicine are the alternatives that get discussed in America the most, multipayer systems are more favored by the patients who are under these systems than single payer systems. I would point out in several of my journal entries that they work better as well. In this system the insurance companies are more like utility companies. They negotiate with the government every year as to how much they can charge and what has to be covered. The areas of competition between the companies are minor.
- Sick Funds—This is the solution I have suggested and is in my writings every where. http://www.dailykos.com/... , http://www.dailykos.com/... In short a small local government develops its own insurance company and offers to cover its residents for a reasonable price based on the person’s wage. This allows the municipality, who runs the fund in a non profit way, to provide care that encourages healthy behavior.
- True HAS—"Health Care Savings Plans" as they are today allow you to contribute very little to your savings plan pretax. The deductibles are large so you end up paying for all the little things in your health care. And the insurance companies still have primary control of your money and your care. Consider this though. If you are a young person, you are unlikely to need a large amount of medical coverage. You could put a little money away every month for years before you would likely need it. This money could earn interest until you were older and likely to need it. In fact the US government could borrow this money from you and pay you interest until you were old and in need of it. This would decrease the government’s dependence on foreign investment. This would not work for every one. People who are already middle aged or older would not benefit and those with chronic illness would also find limited benefits. However this could be part of a larger bill to provide coverage and help to convert to something else.
What we need in this country is a real discussion of our alternatives. Right now we are standing at the counter of 31 flavors and we are being offer chocolate or vanilla. It is time to demand that the health care discussion is opened up to all the alternatives. The internet is one of the few places that any real discussion can be held. But we have seen in the past that a large consensus on the internet can force corporate media to broaden their horizons. That is what we desperately need before we end up with another 15 years of botched health care reform.