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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (54918)	7/18/2004 3:30:37 PM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793789

Karen...Re medical insurance plans. I do definitely think that if the Government (any stripe) pays ANY of the premium for anyone's policy, then the US Taxpayers should have access to ALL medical policies offered to Government employees. It may be "bizarre" as you said, but it is a different idea. We need different ideas today. What we have going now isn't working. Socialized medicine doesn't work. Ask the Canadians we just talked to a couple of weeks ago. They don't think so either. 1) Employee plans are NOT cheaper for the customer because the employer subsidizes them. They are cheaper because there is a larger risk pool of people in the group. I know, because we have a few broker friends in the medical insurance business, with access to all plans, and all costs of those plans, for various numbers of employees. They work entirely on numbers in the RISK POOLS when trying to affix cost of premiums. After the plans are selected by the employer to their employees to peruse, there are various options. The employer generally does (BUT NOT ALWAYS anymore) subsidize some of the cost, at least for the employee, and sometimes for the employees family. The employee pays the remainder of the cost. This is the indirect compensation you spoke of... After 1992, when Hillary closed the doors on the whole medical care situation, the insurance companies saw the handwriting on the wall, and many either quit the business, left some States, and upped the cost of the premiums. Currently, the cost of hospitalization is HUGE (I was just in there...) A good part of the reason it is so high, is that they have to at least admit anyone who comes to emergency, even if they don't have any coverage. Who pays that cost???? Of course, the rest of the people who use the service.... Here you are correct: If you put all taxpayers into a pool, perhaps the gross rates would go down as you say. But then the employer role disappears and there would be nobody to pay the employer subsidy. That would cause net rates would go up dramatically--we'd all be paying full freight. If EVERYONE in the Government (any level or place) would realize the cost for everyone else who is NOT in a huge company or the Government, then perhaps attitudes would change. We would ALL be paying full freight, as you said, BUT at less overall cost, as the RISK POOL would be considerably larger, and thus, the premiums would be less. And as far as your comment below, right now we have several tiers as you outlined in your comment. I think that it should be mandatory that EVERYONE have a basic plan of some sort, even as I said, if it is paid from their welfare check. THEN, after that, everyone could have access, as they do now, to various plans and "buy up" as they can and need to, for additional coverage. With larger RISK POOLS, the cost of premiums will go down. And because of competition, the coverage of various items should improve. Right now we have Medicaid, which is an entitlement for people too poor to breathe, Medicare, which is an entitlement based on prior contributions, employee health plans, which are part of the employer's compensation package, people who buy their own individual insurance, and people who have none. You seem to want to eliminate health insurance as an employee benefit and substitute a universal coverage plan for taxpayers plus a second tier program for non-taxpayers. Other than the separate but unequal character of your two tiers, you could be a Hillary clone. Like I said before, I'm surprised.