I chose a public option health insurance plan when I retired from the USAF in 1995. By the time I started practicing law, I had private options including BCBS. But I stuck with Tricare. Why: Because it was the best option available to me. Tricare, the health care insurance for active and retired military and their families, is a perfect example of a well run public option health insurance with more than adequate coverage for its participants.
If it can be done for DOD folks, there's no reason to think it can't be done for all.
I freely concede that I pay nothing for Tricare Standard coverage (one of three options available to me). In a sense I paid for it with twenty years of service to our country. But it isn't the premium that keeps me here instead of another private health insurance plan. It's the benefits and the standards that make me a Tricare fan. Consider:
- No bureaucrats overriding a doctor's treatment plan because it will cost too much.
- No pre-existing condition restrictions for me or my family
- A reasonable catastrophic cap (i.e., the most co-pay I will shell out each year is 3,000 for my family).
- A choice between military health facilities, in-system, and out of system providers. And it's
my choice, not some insurance clerk thousands of miles away.
And on and on. But I am not trying to sell Tricare, I'm trying to point out that it is possible to have a government managed program (more on that in a moment) that works very, very well. This is what can be available to all Americans if we stick to our guns and tell the majority party in Congress (who is supposed to be on our side) that we want a public option, period.
We won the election, folks, on issues like health care. Let's remind the Congress and the White HOuse of that fact. As so many others have already said, let's go to war for what we want.
Oh, one other thing: Tricare is government funded but managed by private corporations on contract. For a number of years my Tricare coverage was managed by a subsidiary of Blue Cross Blue Shield. Imagine that! A public/private joint effort that yields results! See what happens when you actually work on the problem instead of screaming and yelling?