Massachusetts has a new Democratic governor, Deval Patrick. He is, if I'm not mistaken, the only African-American governor in the United States.
Governor Patrick has inherited Mr. Romney's universal mandate. Do you know what a mandate means? It means that everyone, in theory, must be insured. But this means insurance must be affordable. But for insurance to be affordable, someone is going to get screwed--and you can take it to the bank that it won't be the for-profit insurance company.
Stay with me, please. The Massachusetts Plan is instructive because it illustrates the manipulation of the American people by the political class and their benefactors, the for-profit insurance industry.
Back to Governor Patrick's mess. Don't blame him, this was a gift from Mitt Romney who thinks it will help him glide into the White House. But Mitt Romney and many other politicans, are playing three card monte with the American people.
Governor Deval Patrick yesterday unveiled significantly lower prices for the health insurance plans that uninsured residents will be required to buy starting July 1.
Patrick said six weeks of intense negotiations, in which he personally called the chief executives of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Tufts Health Plan, resulted in lower prices that will make the plans more affordable for uninsured residents.
http://www.boston.com/...
Sounds good. But let's go a little further.
Neighborhood Health Plan, a small Boston-based insurer that primarily serves Medicaid patients, will offer the lowest-priced plan for residents in the Boston area. Its basic plan for individuals between 35 and 39 years old, which covers preventive care, office visits, hospitalization, and prescription drugs, will cost $175.15 a month. As with other plans, the premium increases with age; individuals older than 56 would pay $347 a month.
The annual deductible for the basic plan would be steep: $2,000 for an individual and $4,000 for a family. Similar plans from the three major health plans range from $241.68 a month for Tufts to $288.31 for Harvard Pilgrim, for residents between 35 and 39.
"This brings us an important step closer to universal coverage," Patrick said. "Affordability has always been a critical feature of the healthcare reform plan."
Sorry, Governor, this is bullshit--and you know it. But don't jump all over Governor Patrick, if I'm not mistaken, he must now attempt to implement Mr. Romney's mandate. Perhaps people who live in Massachusetts can give us the inside scoop.
This is nothing but Mr. Bush's Consumer Directed High Deductible crap. Forcing people to buy stripped down, bare-bones health insurance policies is not universal healthcare.
But in America in 2007, the Bush solution du jour to rising health costs is to impose more costs on patients. And even worse, shift these costs onto some members of society most in need of healthcare, low-income Americans.
So-called "consumer directed" care is the political panacea to the implosion of our healthcare system. Make patients more price-sensitive, so the depraved theory goes. If you and I pay what is called, "the first dollar" through high deductible plans and other forms of underinsurance, we will be very judicious as healthcare consumers. So what will be the impact of this on our medical spending--yours and mine?
Well, what do you think? We won't spend. The horrible insurance industry apologists who have developed this garbage, think we Americans are greedy healthcare junkies, and if we are forced to pay, we won't spend.
We Americans just love going for multiple, very expensive colonoscopies. We Americans just love, forgive me, having tubes shoved up our asses. This is more nonsense. High Deductible health care is a bet that if we pay, we will spend cautiously. In practice this is bullshit, Americans will defer seeking healthcare because they can't afford to pay for it.
Keep in mind the skyrocketing credit card debt which I have written about ad nauseum. A huge amount of that debt is for medical care incurred via one of these High Deductible plans.
You can read a diary I recently wrote about the enormous fees which large financial institutions like Citibank generate due to the lack of affordable healthcare in the United States.
Collapse of U.S. health system generates huge fees for Citibank and others
http://www.dailykos.com/...
The Massachusettes Plan is nothing more than a thinly-disguised attempt to shift the risk and cost of health care from employers and insurers to individual consumers and families.
The theory that people splurge on healthcare is abject crap. Every study has demonstrated that CDHD results in people deferring healthcare, and small medical problems become big and expensive problems.
High-deductible plans offer the worst of both worlds. People with High Deductible health plans are half as likely to go to the doctor, fill a prescription, or get needed emergency care—and thus they have bad health outcomes. Many Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, face increasingly serious debt and even bankruptcy before meeting a $2000 or $5,000 deductible. Except for a rare medical catastrophe, these people are paying a monthly premium and remain for all intents and purposes uninsured.
But throwing money to for-profit insurance companies is good for some people. It's good for politicians. The insurance industry funds political campaigns.
It's good for banks, particularly when a slightly more affluent consumer is hoodwinked into buying one of these AfFRAUDABLE high deductible plans and a Health Savings Account.
Benefits for Banks
In related news, the New York Times on Friday looked at how "[b]anks, credit unions and money management firms are ... quietly positioning themselves to become central players in the business of health care, ... hoping to capitalize on the latest wrinkle in medical care paid by consumers: health savings accounts." According to the Times, financial institutions are "drawn by the promise of lucrative fees they can generate by offering consumers mutual funds ... as their account balances grow." Banks and other financial institutions charge about $50 to $75 to set up an HSA, as well as about $40 per year in maintenance charges or service fees, the Times reports. More than 300 financial service companies now facilitate HSAs, compared with only seven small banks that offered the plans two years ago, according to the New York Times. The accounts are lucrative for banks even without investment management fees, because banks make money from payment processing each time a customer uses a HSA debit card at a physician office, according to Daniel Kelly, manager of HSA services at U.S. Bancorp. According to a DiamondCluster International study, about 15 million U.S. residents -- or 10% of all those insured -- will have an HSA by 2010, and payment processing alone could generate about $2.3 billion over the next five years (Dash, New York Times, 1/27).
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/...
It's also good for insurance industry CEO's.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina, which has come under fire for big profits and premium increases, paid its top executive $3.1 million last year, a 22 percent raise.
Several senior executives also received double-digit raises. Three earned more than $1 million in annual compensation for the first time, according to the company's annual report, which The News & Observer obtained from state regulators Friday.
The increases were driven by bonuses that chief executive Robert J. Greczyn Jr. and other executives earned for boosting Blue Cross' financial performance, said spokesman Mark Stinneford.
The health insurer is the state's largest, covering 3.4 million North Carolinians.
The nonprofit company on Friday reported net income of nearly $190 million last year, up 13 percent from 2005. Total revenue rose 15 percent to $4.4 billion.
http://www.newsobserver.com/...
Don't be fooled by what's going on in Massachusetts and California. This is AfFRAUDable healthcare.
. . .and it's very bad for your health.