Reply #16: Their goal - end employer paid health care benefits (Please Read) [View All]

[salin]

Their means to achieve it: ending tax incentives to employers providing health ins to employees.

Their rationale/spin to sell it: Inefficiencies in the market because

a) middle men are not the best consumers for competitive markets...

Note - the middle men are the employers; the implication is that human relations departments are not shopping for competitive health insurance (huh? what it isn't in the companies best interest to get the cheapest cost health care - and that individuals would do a much better job?) Also note how WELL this "taking tons of plans to the public - in the name of competition" is doing for Medicare Plan D.

and b) that consumers of healthcare make unwise decisions (go to the doctor too often) because of LOW copays - and that if consumers had to pay more per visit, they would better ration their use of health care.

Note - the suggestion seems to be that preventative medicine is undesirable and that folks should wait until it is really bad; also odd is the suggestion that if folks went to the doctor less, that healthcare would become more affordable - as if that would create more demand for services making drs and hmos need to be more competitive (again - huh?); more likely is that there were fewer folks seeing doctors, individual trips to the doctor would cost more in order for offices to maintain the income to cover overhead costs.

Their mechanism to be sold: Under the guise of 'expanding health care coverage to Americans' they will promote an increase in the amount of money that can be sheltered (not taxed) in "health savings accounts", coupled with a push for Americans to use less expensive catastrophic coverage policies in conjunction with the savings accounts.

Note - this is a push to get insurance costs off the backs of employers - something businesses have been screaming about while health insurance costs have skyrocketed over the past several years; the implication to the public (not based in any reality) is that if employers didn't have to pay insurance, that employee pay would increase (as if corporations would shift that money back to employees rather than shift it into profit margins), and with the "extra money" (hah!) individuals could buy their own health insurance - opting for cheaper "catastrophic coverage" plans that often have lower monthly payments but very high deductables and don't pay at all for some procedures such as... pregnancies and births; and that individuals would use the rest of the "extra money" (hah!) to invest in tax-free health savings accounts.

The reality is that no extra money is likely to come shift from employers to employees; thus the individual/family must now foot the costs of catastrophic coverage, and money to be put into the savings accounts to a) pay the out of pocket deductables, and for emergency costs of things not covered by the very limited (in terms of coverage) catastrophic coverage. This would mean that millions of Americans who have insurance today - would suddenly have to pay out several thousand dollars a year MORE than they do today for much less adequate health coverage. Because wages are not increasing at a rate to generate these additional funds - it is likely that many working and lower middle to middle income families will not have the additional income required to get the insurance and to pay into the health savings accounts.

How they intend to get it done: Bush is also pushing for "tax simplification" - his other major domestic policy push of 2006. This plan includes the major mechanism to shift health care costs from employers to employees. The plan will END all tax incentives/subsidies to employers that provide health insurance to its employees. Simultaneously the tax code changes would expand the amount of money allowed to be put into tax-free "health savings accounts".

Note - how many companies, already suffering due to exponential increases in costs of health care over the past ten years, are going to keep providing health insurance coverage when it becomes even MORE expensive to do so? Most likely the only company paid for health benefits would be reserved for the executive level with everyone else being dropped. Overnight the ranks of the uninsured will swell.

Salin's overall note to anyone reading this post - I have been trying a way to pull together my thoughts and concerns on this issue - as the writing on the wall has grown more clear to me since the details of Bush's push on "the strength of the economy" a couple of weeks ago were released which included this push on healthcare. My memory of various writeups on the work and plans of Bush's special panel on "Tax Simplification", which included the ending of tax incentives for employers providing health insurance - made the current news/themes make the hair on my neck stand on edge. I haven't been able to find a way to write this concisely - so here is a stab at it.

The mess of the medicare drug plan should put a face to the lie that taking complex plans straight to consumers = more efficiency with cheaper and better coverage - but I fear that the rhetoric will obscure the links between the president's new push - and the realities of his botched medicare plan D reform. Most frightening of all is his success throughout his presidency of winning ALL votes that are related to "tax cuts" - even when the public is no longer behind it - because of the GOPers in the senate and house. I fear that the whole details on the push to end employer health insurance will be obscured in a "tax cut" sell athon - and that the public will not be aware of the HUGE implications... until it is too late.

If anyone reads this - please respond. Does what I write make sense? What else can be added to help folks watch the boiler plate of how the bush admin and GOP in congress is going to approach "health reform" + "tax reform" in a way that will actually swell the ranks of the uninsured and put millions of Americans at even greater risk of bankruptcy, and worse than that of serious health risks due to little to no access to preventative medicine and little to no access to life-saving medicine/medical attention.

Thank you,

salin