Just one man's opinion
Here comes the “Ryan Plan”. Make no mistake, the plan if enacted will look nothing like our pre-paid insurance plan (Medicare) we’ve been paying into for most of our lives. It will move the administration of our retirement healthcare into the hands of the private insurance sector.
Jump the broom with me
You’ll be given a voucher to go out and find the best deal possible in a pool of various for profit insurance companies. If your folks or grand folks can’t negotiate that or afford the difference, it’ll fall on the families. Broad stroke assessments of the bill, but those are the facts.
The worst part of the Ryan Bill is what it’ll do to premiums with or without a voucher. Wake up small business.
Health insurance premiums for business have two overwhelming factors; the economy of scale (EOC) and cost of services (COS).
The EOC is based on pure numbers. If you have 30 employees the risk to the insurance company is higher than if you have 3000. The more employees you have the less risk you have and smaller premiums. The EOC has been a killer for small businesses, fewer employees …higher premiums. Expect to see less and less innovations coming from small business, they won’t be able to attract the people needed without benefits and they are not going to be able to afford them. Innovation and entrepreneurship, isn’t that what makes America great?
The (COS) is where the Ryan Plan pays off big the insurance lobby. When a business negotiates for healthcare that insurance company has sat down with the healthcare providers in the area (hospitals, doctors…etc.) for how much they are going to charge for their cost of services … emergency room visits, doctors, co-pays – just about every medical line item is negotiated between the provider and insurer. These negotiations include covering the loss of revenues due to treating the uninsured. That’s right, we’ve been paying for the uninsured for decades, and we just weren't let in on what was happening in the back board rooms. ?
According to the Ryan Plan Medicare as we know it will die in about 11 years. During that time, the uninsured population will explode. Who’s paying for those uninsured? We are and always have.
On average the health insurance industry is working on a 20-22% profit, that’s after expenses. The Medicare program runs at no profit and operates on average at 3%. And we propose giving an industry 17-19% profit on something that’s only costing us 3%? What, are we stupid?
We’ve heard a lot about free market, we heard it about banks, which we bailed out, insurance companies, who we bailed out and Wall Street, who we bailed out, bastions of the free market. If the Ryan Plan passes, we will have created the largest shell game every perpetrated on this country, and we’ve had some dandy’s. Health insurance premiums will explode, the “vouchers” will never cover what will be coming our way and we will have an industry run for profit that will be the pinnacle of too big to fail. Check and Match
I’ve never talked to a senior who was dissatisfied with how their Medicare insurance worked for them (exception the “donut hole”). As for private insurance, need I say more?
I count in my country as a right, to breathe clean air, the right to have access to clean water, these I must have to live. I also count the right to have access to affordable healthcare, something I also can’t at some point in my life live without.
The Ryan Plan will “drown” the Medicare Program and what will arise from that bathtub will be a monstrous, for profit, charge anything they want, too big to fail industry and it will affect every single American --- and how has that worked out for us lately? Not so good!
It’s time for the President to put single-payer healthcare back on the table, dismantle the Prescription Drug Program and Medicare Advantage, end the black hole that the “wars” represent – that’s a budget we could believe in. Then let’s see if the CBO scores this plan better than the F the Ryan Plan got.
I understand it’d be a scary to put out a Medicare Healthcare Plan, odds are that the Ryan Plan is so bad, that a Democratic Plan could have legs … beat the hell out of the Ryan Plan throughout the cycle and design a plan that cuts corporate welfare programs ... i.e the prescripton drug plan and the "Advantage" program, and if we must have a huge military, stop the outsourcing and give those jobs to middle American men and women, train them and give them skills that they can move into the private sector after service. The Republican's would never pass it ... and that in itself would be a very good thing.