The dream solution for the insurance companies (a nightmare for us)

[eomer]

What are insurance companies angling for? Could it be this:

• Cheap sub-par policies for healthy people.
  
• Real insurance for everyone else.

If the temporary fix were to somehow become the end solution then the insurance companies have the perfect "heads I win, tails you lose" situation. They get to rip off young people because they can charge unreasonable amounts for the illusion of insurance up to the point when those people become ill and quickly max out of the benefits of their cheap, fake insurance. But, no problem, they can then just get real insurance, an Obamacare policy with no annual or lifetime limits.

I should quickly say, though, that calling Obamacare "real insurance" in this scenario is not really correct. Because real insurance should have people pay into the pool before they've experienced the loss being insured. The idea of insurance is that if everyone who is exposed to a risk shares its cost then that cost is affordable. If you try to share the cost only among people who've already experienced the loss that none of them individually could afford then obviously the group as a whole can't afford it either. In other words, a scenario like this would put Obamacare into the infamous "death spiral", just the same as we've seen certain private insurance pools get into - once healthy people begin leaving the pool, the cost goes up, more healthy people flee it, the cost goes up more, before long the pool of only seriously ill people fails because those remaining people can't afford the cost.

It's a really bad idea to let this get started, even if it doesn't become permanent. Because there's also the risk that this is exactly the mistake that kills Obamacare. Letting healthy people stay out of Obamacare will only exacerbate the impression that Obamacare is more expensive than non-Obamacare. That impression will actually be true but for a reason that most people will never understand. It sets up the perfect opportunity for the corporations and the corporate media to say, "we told you so, Obamacare is more expensive".

I should also make my position clear that Obamacare is not the best solution, not even particularly a good solution compared with single payer. But if it fails in some scenario like I've described then we will have decades during which the prevailing conclusion will be that government couldn't do it right and should hand control back to the magical free market. We need to make Obamacare work reasonably well while Vermont and other states demonstrate that there's a better alternative.

[RC]

1. The only viable solution is to cover everything for everyone.

Prostate cancer for women - Covered. Pregnancy and ovarian cancer for men - Covered. Every medical condition is covered for everyone, regardless. NO MORE DENYING MEDICAL HELP because some bean counter, with a computer program tied to the bottom line, says someone is not covered because the are not rich enough! Who gets what medical procedures are medical decisions, not a business decision of a for profit, third party.

Single Payer, Universal Health Care, paid for by a tax on income, regardless of income, as long is it is some percentage above the poverty level. No caps, period. It makes no difference whether you make $10,000 a year or $100,000,000 or even more, everyone is covered the same. No more Cadillac plans for those that can afford them and denial of health care if you can't.