States Refuse To Save $ By Taking Health Insurance Co's Out Of The Picture (Chirolas)

[Tace]

William Chirolas -- World News Trust

Dec. 13, 2006 -- Health via tax collection payments to Insurers, as with Romney’s Massachusetts Universal Coverage plan, is the insurance company approved "variation" on single payer universal health that is the proposal by the Oregon Senate Interim Commission on Health Care Access and Affordability.

As with Massachusetts, the proposal would not provide universal coverage, but would make coverage available to everyone who wants to pay the rates set by the State, with insurers running the actual system in all ways except rate-setting. (Unlike Massachusetts, Oregon is not talking about stripping the insurance down to a meaningless level so as to fit the premium that state deems the poor can afford.)

But you know the “profit by excluding folks for health care” business plan of the insurance companies means Oregon will have to have an assigned risk pool that they will have to administer or put out for bid at very high rates. Indeed, this is going to work much the same as mandatory auto liability when the State sets the rates -- a system we in Massachusetts tolerate because the alternative of the Companies competition setting the rates has always produced higher rates (I do love how competition lowers rates).

The media seems to allow the news to be framed as if the new rate-setting authority provides a cost-saving universal health-care plan for the state, and is not doing any comparisons to mandated auto liability in states with state-set rates. The rate-setting would be through all employers and individuals “contributing” money to a common pool called the Oregon Health Care Trust Fund, with the money from business collected possibly with a payroll tax, and with large companies with self-insurance plans having their contributions reimbursed. (Residents who earn less than 250 percent of the poverty level would not have to pay to be in the plan, but public employee and federal Medicaid contributions would go in.)

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http://www.worldnewstrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=738&Itemid=1

[Lasher]

1. Might as well make it official - big business owns the government

We've sold our water systems to foreign companies, so why not use this scheme to outsource the rest of Medicare? Guess these people didn't bother to read this article that shows the USA could save enough by cutting out these middlemen to cover all the uninsured, pay all out of pocket prescription drug costs for everyone, improve the coverage people have now, and retrain all the displaced insurance company employees. We're not talking about rocket science here. All you have to do is compare our healthcare 'system' with Canada's. We pay lots more for lots less and this is why.

Privatization has gotten way out of hand. Mercenaries in Iraq, pimping private accounts to replace Social Security - what next?

[papau]

2. I agree - corporate control via "political contributions" screws us - but single payer in Oregon is

still possible.

New Oregon health could cut the offered payment to the Ins co & take the "risk" on itself

It would simply structure a max claims per dollar received by the company - say 97% - rather than today's 60 to 75% - and say it would reimbursed for claims over that level - while at the same time demanding a refund of the part of the payment when claims were below 95% of the payment so as to bring the ratio up to 95%.

In effect the above would change the plan into single payer universal health.

There is still time for those in Oregon to have there voice heard.