Obama's Health Care Reform

A government run health insurance option serves two essential goals of health care reform. It provides needed competition in places where a single private insurer dominates the market, and its national size gives it appropriate clout to drive a better deal with hospitals and drug companies.

Of the many goals of health care reform, bringing down costs is the most obvious benefit for all Americans. A public plan would achieve savings from not only its bargaining power but its lack of having to pay dividends or exorbitant private-sector executive salaries. With an immediately recognizable national brand, a public plan’s marketing costs would be lower. Competition with this public plan would force private insurers to get their costs down and adhere strictly to regulations forbidding insurers from excluding customers with preexisting conditions or charging them higher rates.

Critics of the public plan worry, with some merit, that the government could decide to subsidize the public plan at the expense of private insurers, but that’s a fear that may never come to pass: All the current proposals guarantee an even playing field. And it’s ironic that private insurers would extol the benefits of the free market, because in many states there is precious little competition now. According to the American Medical Association, a single insurer covers 70 percent or more of people in nine states, while in at least 17 other states a single insurer covers at least 50 percent. Virtually all reform proposals include an individual mandate, forcing the nation’s 47 million uninsured people to buy insurance. Congress should feel obligated to ensure they have more than just a single insurance provider to pick from.

Opponents of a public plan are quick to point to Massachusetts as a state that has achieved near-universal coverage without a public plan. But Massachusetts has had a long history of consumer-friendly regulation of health insurance. All its major insurers are nonprofits, functioning much as a public plan would. If all states had an insurance market like Massachusetts’, no one would be talking about including a public plan in national legislation.

An alternative to a public plan favored by some Senate Democrats is a proliferation of the health cooperatives that already exist, especially in the West. The most successful function like nonprofit health-maintenance organizations with networks of providers who emphasize preventive care and don’t engage in the over utilization of tests and procedures common among providers working on a fee-for-service basis.

I really enjoy people who think Obama's plan sticks it to the insurance companies. These insurance companies are supporting the bill! They have crunched the numbers and realized this bill creates a lot of profit for them. There are a lot of people out there who are incorrectly labeling Obamacare as socialism. Those people are so obviously wrong, because what we have here is fascism. Fascism is the convergance of the state and corporations. In a fascist system you have private profits and public losses. Obamacare is no different then the banker bailout, it will use public money to enrich a select few, with perhaps some trickle down bread crumbs for the average person. So if you have insurance you may not have to pay for mamograms anymore, but your insurance premium will rise 50%. Crumby...

This plan is giving people tax credits so they can buy insurance. No wonder the insurance companies are for this. If I was selling something I would love the government to subsidize it. If I was a fascist anyway. The plan requires companies to give health insurance to their employees. At a time where unemployment is around 18 percent we are going to require companies to make workers more expensive? Sounds like a great way to increase unemployment even more. Another thing this plan does is require people who can "afford" health insurance to do so. Many of the people listed by Obama as not having insurance are either illegal aliens or people who can afford insurance, but choose not to get it. By requiring them to get it we are forcing people to give even more money to insurance companies. Do you see a theme here. I see a reoccuring theme of government force being used to make you buy a product.

All this plan does is subsidize and require the purchase of health insurance. Don't worry the government is going to make you pay more for insurance- absolutely free. One of the talking points about Obamacare is that it won't "add a dime to the defecit". I suppose that's true. It will add billions of dollars to the defecit, and billions are certainly not a dime. The government is already over 12 trillion dollars in debt (not including unfunded liabilities) but somehow adding another gigantic government program won't cost any money? Obama believes we're all fools. If this comes to be, he's right.