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

To: KLP who wrote (54922)	7/18/2004 3:58:10 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793799

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. I don't have a strong objection to doing this even though it would be more "socialized" than what we have now. There's no good reason for employers to be in the health care business and, by relying on that model, we leave others out in the cold. This is not good. 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 I just doubt that the premiums would decrease as much as you think. Maybe the gross cost would decrease ten percent cheaper with a big pool but I doubt it. Pool size matters for catastrophic insurance where there are few payouts for large sums. For health plans that are labeled "insurance," the marginal value of the size of the pool beyond a certain point won't matter. The real deal for employees is the subsidy. Do you really think your relative pays only sixty bucks because of pool size? More likely, his employer is paying three quarters of the cost or more. There's no way increasing pool size will compensate for that.