Bob, People may be "happy" with their current plan, good for them--my point was that they could lose that plan tomorrow if their employer decides to toss it for something else. That happened several times to me when I was working for companies. It isn't that Obama or the public option will "take their plan away," it is the companies' choice.
Lookit, the point is to try to reduce the burden of health care, to spend less than the 18% or so of GDP that we are spending now and break the inexorable march upward of costs that we have been plagued with for decades now.
There are only two ways to do that--increase productivity, and pay the providers less than they are getting now. Unhappily for providers, both of these will be necessary. No other country pays its health care providers as much as we do. And the insurance industry in this country will simply have to get smaller than it is today. It is understandable that they are rebelling against that. But I'm afraid that is too bad for them--it will happen sooner with real reform, or it will happen later when employers simply can't afford to carry health care anymore, and drop the plans even without a public option.
The only way to lower costs soon, IMHO, is with a public option that will offer basic and catastrophic plans, with people able to buy supplemental insurance for whatever they want. There will still be a role for private health insurance, it will just be smaller than it is now. As is always the case when vested interests are challenged and changed, there will be pain due to this. |
