Will It Be Affordable Universal Health Care or a Government Bailout for the Insurance Companies?

Better Believe It

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Thu Jun-11-09 01:19 PM
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Will It Be Affordable Universal Health Care or a Government Bailout for the Insurance Companies?

Edited on Thu Jun-11-09 01:20 PM by Better Believe It

OBAMACARE: Will It Be Affordable Universal Health Care or a Government Bailout for the Insurance Companies?
By Miles Mogulescu
Huffington Post
June 10, 2009

There is a version of health care reform that would be very much to the liking of the for-profit health insurance industry and is very much in line with proposals being discussed by health insurance shills in Congress like Baucus and Grassley who have received huge campaign contributions from the for-profit health care industry.

• First, it would mandate that every uninsured American buy private health insurance or be fined by the IRS. This would provide the health insurance industry with 40-50 million new paying customers. (Obama argued against Hillary Clinton's proposals for such individual mandates in the Presidential debates, but now appears to be prepared to accept them as part of the price for insurance industry support for a health reform bill.)

• Second, it would provide partial subsidies to families who make less than two to three times the poverty level to buy private insurance, money that would go straight into the pockets of the for-profit insurance companies.

• Third, it would pay for this government subsidy by making workers pay income tax on their employer-provided health benefits. (John McCain supported this approach and Obama opposed it during the campaign, but Congressional opposition to other taxes to pay for health care reform may leave it as the last available option to Obama.) As Obama pointed out in his debates with McCain, this would lead many employers to drop health coverage for their employees and force them into the individual insurance market which is the most profitable sector for the insurance industry.

• Fourth, it would jettison the implementation of a public non-profit insurance option that might cut costs and provide serious competition to the private insurance industry, or more likely, include a neutered public insurance option that would be barred from seriously negotiating with providers for lower prices, and that might well benefit private insurers by offering a dumping ground for older and less healthy consumers whom private insurers don't want to insure, anyway.

The question now is, having taken single payer off the table, how far is the Obama administration and its progressive supporters--both in Congress and in the grassroots movement--willing to further compromise in order to say that they passed some kind of health reform bill? Will they continue to say that "everything is negotiable?" Or will they say that unless there is a robust public option, a viable means to finance subsidies to the uninsured to buy insurance, waivers to any individual mandate for those who can't afford insurance, and continued tax-deductibility of employer-provided health care, Obama will veto the bill, key House and Senate liberals will vote against the bill, and the progressive movement will oppose it?

Unless Obama, Congressional liberals, and the progressive movement are prepared to draw a line in the sand behind these key, non-negotiable, reform principals, the health industry lobby will eat their lunch, health care reform will turn into a government bailout for the insurance companies, and over the next few years the public may turn against Democrats who allowed such a flawed form of health care reform to become law. It won't be a matter of the "perfect being the enemy of the good" but of the bad being the enemy of the even worse.

Please read the complete article at:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20090610/cm_huffpost/213430

Obama didn't call for a bi-partisan healthcare bill today, unless I missed it, and that's good

On the "public option" the devil is in the details.

What kind of public option?