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TechnoratiNow that the hubbub over Hillary Clinton's health insurance plan has temporarily subsided, that silence you hear is the sound of Republican presidential candidates offering their own alternatives to finally cover all of the country's 47 million uninsured men, women and children.What, you don't hear them?
The newfangled Republican idea about how to fix the broken health insurance system is as old as Hooverism. In fact, if you liked President Bush's plan to change Social Security from a system of guaranteed benefits to an uncertain scheme in which individuals would fund their own retirement through private investment accounts, then you'll love how proposed Republican tax cuts for health insurance would work.
Basically, the emerging Republican idea about health insurance is the same as the party's idea about everything else: Take any problem that is large and complex and solve it with a tax cut. In essence, the GOP would do away with the employer-based system of health insurance and put in its place a system of tax breaks for individuals who would then supposedly have enough money-not to mention negotiating skills-to buy their own coverage and get a better deal from the insurance industry. The leading Republican contender, Rudy Giuliani, has been the most vocal about this approach, but others embrace it as well.
Eliminating employer-based insurance and bestowing upon individuals a tax cut with which they buy insurance is supposed to miraculously tip the healthcare balance in favor of consumers. The presumed increase in competition would theoretically lower prices.
Now, anyone who's ever called an insurance company to protest the denial of a claim knows just how much power the individual consumer wields. And neither Giuliani nor any other Republican has spelled out a method for keeping companies from selling policies only to the healthiest. Nor do they seek to block the industry from charging higher rates to those who are elderly or have chronic ailments or a sick child.
The Employee Benefit Research Institute studied the approach and found there would be some gain in abandoning the employment-based system: Such a change would at least recognize the degree to which the workplace-based structure is crumbling and many workers whose employers currently offer only one plan would see greater choice.
But the benefits group-which is funded largely by corporate sponsors, including big insurance companies-says that because of insurance industry consolidation, "increased choice may simply mean that individuals have more plans to choose from; competition among insurers may not increase." That is, prices wouldn't necessarily drop.
And, of course, the benefit of having employers purchase insurance for groups of workers would be lost. Individuals would be thrown into what the research institute calls the "dysfunctional individual insurance market," in which the industry seeks to avoid covering those most at risk of getting sick. The price discounts and coverage advantages of spreading the risk among all employees at a company would be lost. So would the leverage that employers have when they advocate for workers during disputes over claims. "Insurers are more likely to respond to an employer than to an individual because of the risk of losing a large group contract,'' the researchers concluded.
But what about reducing the number of uninsured? The tax changes promoted earlier this year by Bush-and mimicked by Giuliani-simply wouldn't be great enough to offset the high cost of premiums. "Hence, it should come as no surprise that the number of uninsured would remain at or above 40 million," says the EBRI.
So here's how this all would work: The risk and cost of insurance would be shifted to individuals, with little, if any, reduction in premiums and other healthcare costs. But there still would be little progress toward insuring the uninsured.
Republicans offer this grand bargain while simultaneously hyperventilating over "Hillarycare" and "socialized" medicine and dark predictions that those nefarious European-inspired bureaucrats-mon Dieu, perhaps even the French!-will destroy that icon of American virtue, the insurance industry.
The rhetoric is false. None of the leading Democratic presidential contenders proposes a federally run system-such as Medicare-to solve the coverage dilemma. If anything, most current Democratic plans are weaker than anything the party has offered since Harry Truman proposed national health insurance.
But as usual, the Republican political noise serves a larger purpose. It distracts from the ugliness of GOP alternatives that fail to expand coverage and would probably make those who do have it worse off than they are now.
Marie Cocco's e-mail address is mariecocco(at)washpost.com.
© 2007 TruthDig.com
14 Comments so far
Show AllThe across the board axiom regarding US health care programs:
No access to health care for the undeserving poor.
I thought the article was going to state the standard GOP health care plan, "Don't get sick." =)
as a retired health care worker ( RPh )I am glad to be far removed from the nightmare the system has become.
$56 for a Rx I know didn't cost more than $8 to the store.
We have been bare of insurance for 3 months because of a job shift and enrollment timetables, normally that script would have been $15, which in my professional opinon is still too high.
Shoot, at this point I'll take anything I can get, even a tax deduction for the $10,000 it cost me this year as a healthy, albeit 60-year-old, individual medical insurance buyer of HMO coverage (goes up 25% each year for the past 6 years, too). Unless I can land a job with benefits, as opposed to being self-employed or doing temporary work, I'm going to be raiding retirement funds to pay for today's health insurance.
After watching a few minutes of the AARP "Debates" last Sunday, I turned it off and sent a letter to AARP. A waste of time, perhaps, but at least a statement of non-support of AARP and the "leading" Dem candidates. I asked why Kucinich and Gravel were not represented. No Answer.
peace,
st john
Thanks for this article. Health Care is the #1 issue for citizens, whether they know it or not. It is also the #1 issue for Christians, and many of them (us) don't know it. I'd love to seen Kucinich elected and have him implement his single-payer ideas, but it isn't going to happen. As for third parties, the Ralph Nader effort was the single reason we did not have President Al Gore in 2000 and since. Please support your local and national Democrats. 2008 is not a pageant about whether we like Hillary or Barack, or neither. It is a watershed moment in history which will define whether or not America retains any middle class of folks who can make it on less than $100,000 a year or more, and health care is the "definer". We either elect Democrats, including 60 in the Senate, or we watch corporatized medicine eat our lunch--and our children's lunch. If you think the AFLAC duck is informative about the real merits of the short-term disability insurance he advertises, just wait until you see the quality of the marketing that will be rolled out under Republicans' ideas about a private health insurance market. They will give you choices, choices, choices, all of them designed to pick your pocket until you're hapless and helpless. I'm not kidding, I've been in self-employment and I know what it's like to buy my own insurance with medical underwriting. Take heart, don't badmouth, and elect lots and lots of Democrats! They're not perfect, but they're our best hope.
One more thing, the Clintons are lap dogs to the corporations or whoever else can help fill there wallets. Its time to throw ALL of them out - but please START WITH THE REPUBLICANS. Lets start a new party called the Tired Party. We start by putting tires filled with gasoline around the heads of all
Repukigans and then setting them ablaze. If people that we supposedly elect will not work for us, then we light them up!
I do not like any ideas on health care because they all "dance" around its implementation. I propose that the entire medical and health care industry be re-configured to do exactly as it is supposed to do. Take care of the sick. I am confused as to why there is a doctor shortage when seldom are white males allowed to get into med school. As a consequence, the medical proffesion is staffed with immigrants that come over here with their H1 visa's, cant speak english and our health care suffers. Then the conservative idiot flatlanders start complaining about "socialized medicine". Its time to tell them to shut the fuck up! How much is the stupid war against terror costing us? 190 billion dollars would go a long way towards everybody's heath care, or Blackwaters and Haliburtons healthcare. Like I said, none of these idiots except K are worth a shit.
One of the reasons I willnever live in the US again is the health care system. None of the others are perfect, but give me the Swiss or French system any day.
all of the Democrats' health care plans (except Kucinich's) are all terrible--they are giveaways to the health insurance industry, just like Clinton's failed attempt from the early 90's.
single payer now!
PS: as nice as Kucinich is I wouldn't waste my time. the Democrats are a corporate party--they will never let him win and if by some miracle he did win, Congress would never pass any of his progressive ideas. The Democrats are a dead end and they are *using* Kucinich as window dressing to keep actual progressives from leaving the party. real progressives don't vote democrat--they help organize an alternative!
I like Kucinich and would vote for him but the reality is that in the rigged game of todays politics he won't get the Democratic nomination. Then only alternative would be to persuade him to run as an independent, and frankly I don't see that happening, especially since he has said he won't.
Lobo Gris
"PS: as nice as Kucinich is I wouldn’t waste my time. the Democrats are a corporate party–they will never let him win and if by some miracle he did win, Congress would never pass any of his progressive ideas."
THIS MAKES MY POINT ABOUT NEGATIVE-ENERGY-THINKING-"FORECASTING". When I read this kid of shit I wonder--WHY BOTHER?!
Excluding Dennnis Kucinich from the recent AARP Democratic Party forum on health care shows that the "leading" Democratic Party contenders and the AARP are part of the medical industry cartel.
It is bad enough that AARP won't endorse Kucinich's single payer plan. By excluding Kucinich, AARP demonstrates that they are serving the medical industry cartel, not the over-50 crowd that they claim to serve.
The Republicans have been programed by Karl Rove to shout "socialized medicene" anytime a Democrat mentions health care, irrepective of whether the Democrat is talking about single payer, Hillarycare, or anything in between.
The Democrats have nothing to lose with single payer, except for a lot of campaign contributions from the Cartel.
"None of the leading Democratic presidential contenders proposes a federally run system-such as Medicare-to solve the coverage dilemma. If anything, most current Democratic plans are weaker than anything the party has offered since Harry Truman proposed national health insurance."
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I guess if "leading" meant integrity and intelligent thinking for "The People", Dennis Kucinich's plan would have been mentioned, Ms. Coco??? Thanks, again, to writers for their moaning and whining in a negative fashion instead of pointing out the positive options such as HR. #676.
The more I read the articles at commondreams and other sites and the accompanying pseudo-pundit posts that follow, the more I realize what a negative society of "Progressives" we (Me included) have become. There is hardly ever any looking at the positive force that Dennis Kucinich is in the political spectrum. And yet you fall all over yourselves when the name Cindy Sheehan comes up. And yet these two are VERY MUCH ON AN IDENTICAL PAGE!
I love the idea of Cindy running for office and EVERYTHING she stands for. I love that she's a non-wealthy "real person" who has had enough of the illegal war and the murder and the "politics-as-usual" mentality thriving in D.C. AND most of America. But, Folks, Dennis Kucinich is running for the highest office in the land with nearly no support with the same values and background!!! If he had been listened to from the very beginning of the Iraq fiasco, Ms. Sheehans's son and others' sons and daughters might not have died! Is it Ms. Sheehan's "star power",which was mentioned in another article that draws more people in? Because she is, in fact, a "star" in her own right.
Ms. Sheehen ALSO gets MANY times the coverage that Kucinich gets and look at the results! She is a household name among damn near every Progressive on the web! Imagine if that same coverage and attention were paid to Dennis and his platform of Progressive ideas?!
If you all got behind Dennis Kucinich with the same passion, support, and "worship" that you feel for Cindy, we would have a TRUE PROGRESSIVE President in the White House since...when?!
Cindy, if you are reading this, we have written a few e-mails back and forth and I hope you know I mean no disrespect for what I've written here. In a perfect world you and Dennis would both win your respective elections. But what concerns me is that you, with your media and Progressive attention WILL WIN--thankfully!--but Dennis, as things are going now, will not, and we will have a frightened and subservient America for at least another four years.