>> The trade off is a little more regulation of the product.
If it were a "little more", I'd really not be complaining.
But one can readily see, from the restructuring the industry is undergoing (not only health care payments, but the entire health care system) the regulation isn't a little more, it is a lot more.
When you tell insurance companies what their maximum allowable profit margin is, that is a lot of regulation -- even if it doesn't create a big problem for them immediately -- because it is a matter of time before those allowances are decreased by Congress to the point of unsustainability. When you mandate that insurance policies must cover consumable items, like contraception, and that young people aren't rated differently from old people, and middle class people are subsidized by taxpayers, and it goes on and on, this is turning a previously functioning system on its head.
It is a very big, very complex system. I'm not sure a lot of people grasped that. And you can't just roll in with people who don't understand those systems and dictate to the people who do, "It will be done this way." Not and expect it to continue functioning without adverse economic consequences. Which we're starting to see, in spite of efforts to hide the downsides.
No one is saying it didn't need work. Only that you cannot rework a system like this with a one-sided view and expect it to work. You need input from EVERYONE, and frankly, there was no input from the most important people -- those who will be buying the product. |
