Employer Mandate?
News reports indicate that at this stage of Senate health care reform negotiations, both the “public option” and “employer mandates” are not included in the Senate health care reform bill. What are they thinking? We have already 40-50 million uninsured Americans and if the employers of those with health care coverage suddenly decide company profits are more important and stop offering coverage, what do you think is going to happen?
I can understand why employer provided coverage can be viewed as unfair. Some plans are simply better than others, coverage is temporary lasting only as long as employment, and in a global economy, providing health care place some uncompetitive burden on the employers. But that is a strong argument for a single payer system, and that most politicians are against.
The “public option” is, according to polls, very attractive to most Americans. I do not think politicians are listening close enough yet. Senators Fluster and Bluster argue that the government does not know how to run anything and the cost of this new option would quickly be out of control. These are reasonable concerns but also fly in the face of the facts that Medicare works quite well and further that Medicare costs have risen far less than private insurance costs.
As you argue health care reform, certain principles keep popping up.
- Everyone needs to be in the game and contributing to the cost of their health care.
- “Opting out” is an American right, but must be accompanied with huge penalties to re-enter at a later date.
- The model for basic care should be that which Congress receives, it should be portable, and it should have no pre-existing condition exclusions.
- The method of funding is open for discussion. Employer provided coverage is simply a tax by another name. Tax credits, public option, straight income tax, and/or employer provision are all options to be weighed and evaluated.
What will Senators Fluster and Bluster decide?
This entry was posted on July 29, 2009 at 9:33 am and is filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Politics, Republican Party. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.
Tags: employer mandate, health care, health care reform, insurance industry, public options
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