The McCain Health Care Plan ..
Isnt it wonderful that now, after being supposedly annointed as the parties preference, John McCain is finaly going to tell us what great ideas he has in his head? Makes one wonder why noone had thought to ask before they voted.
Recently he released his health care plan.
In a nutshell his plan is to decouple insurance with employment by eliminating the tax break employers now enjoy as an enticement to offer their employees the benifit. He would replace this with a 5000$ tax credit to individuals to help with individual purchase of plans.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04...
On the surface ... this plan scares me;
but its a topic I have not realy thought much about until now.
The impression I get is that under this plan, most, if not all employers will drop insurance as a benifit since it would now be a non deductable expense. In return indivduals would get a government stipend to cover a "PORTION" of the cost of private insurance. The rest would be out of pocket.
Now how will this effect pricing of the product?
Hmm ..
What is conservative about dismantling an employee compensation program that has been worked out freely over centuries and replacing it through government heavy handedness with a paid stipend? What am I missing and how is this going to lead to anything but chaos?
Is chaos now a new conservative principle?
I've never liked having my
I've never liked having my health insurance coupled with my employment. There are a lot of guys like me out there who do not work for the same employer for years and years. Every time I get a new job, I have a whole big mess figuring out what to do with what is offered to me, and most of the time, in my experience, the Dr. or Hospital just keeps sending the bills back to me because the insurance company is sitting on their hands and they think I'll just get tired of it and just pay it myself.
If we got rid of the IRS, we'd all have plenty of money for health insurance.
Things are only impossible until they are not.
-- Jean Luc Picard
Things are only impossible until they are not.
-- Jean Luc Picard
Health Insurance
I am involved very closely with health insurance and health care in general. I am a doctor. I have seen the excesses in the system and can see that if the consumer does not pay for the product, it will cost much more. This is because the consumer will not care what the cost/benefit is regarding a medical procedure. They will just want every test whether warranted or not. People need to directly pay for health care. The cost will either go down or we will all go out of business. The high cost of medications will drop or they will go out of business due to lack of sales. Many medications are not really necessary from a cost benefit analysis anyhow and very likely cause more problems than they cure.
The $5,000 credit would more than pay for my high deductible plan that I have for my family of 5.
Excellent (sort of)
Your post kind of started off on a tangent that I have been thinking along myself.
If people paid directly, then costs would drop.
I am reminded of how every time I need to see a doctor, which isnt often, I have to wait weeks or months to get an appointment because the schedual is so backed up with people who dont really need to be there.
It is an amazing thing, what something being free will do for peoples desire to have more of it, and once insured, people have no aversion to backing up the system for a headache or a cold or whatever.
But what does this McCain 5000$ plan have in common with this line of thinking? Isnt it more of the same?
Are you thinking along the line of offering more high deductable, low cost plans that actualy act as insurance for catostrophic things while allowing patients some flexibility to care for themselves?
It would barely pay for mine (family of 4)
Last month:
$450 Insurance payment (medical/dental)
3 x $30 deductable
$250 in blood draws
6 x $80 (cavity fillings)
I am self employed and will be canceling my insurance soon.
Mathew 5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.