What if the following were to happen?

[TheCoxwain]

1) Health Insurance industry were regulated like a utility - cap administrative expenses at 5%. Penalties for exceeding it.
2) Pre-existing conditions cannot be rejected.
3) Everyone with the same benefits should pay the same premium ( No discounts for larger organization), No extra premium for people with pre-existing conditions). We basically force the insurance companies to compete on reducing overhead costs.
4) Anyone who gets sick cannot be dropped.



If the above were to happen - will you be okay without a public option?

[Deep13]

1. NO!!! nt

[Oregone]

2. Question: If the above happened, what is the point of private insurers existing?

That is a serious question. If you cap administrative overhead at 5%, you are seriously limiting compensation and the ability of a capitalistic entity to deliver profits to its shareholders. You are drastically hamstringing their entire operations by imposing strict regulations on them. Why even hassle with them?

Why have 400 regulated insurers that STILL have 2 to 3 times the overhead of a socialistic entity, and still, via the multi-payer approach, add an extra 10% to medical facilities to outsource billing?

What would be the point? If you were going to go that far, just finish the damn job

[MNDemNY]

3. FUCK NO !!

Nothing more to be said. A STRONG "public option" is THE compromise from single payer. Any further "watering down" makes any bill worthless. NO PUBLIC OPTION, NO BILL !!

[John Q. Citizen]

11. I wish it were, but you can't compromise on what isn't on the table. And the Dems and Obama keeping

single payer off the table doomed the public option to be the only thing sitting on the table to compromise with.

We tried to warn people but they said we were supposed to blindly trust the Dems and Obama and not make waves.


I haven't seen the Dems or Obama taking responsibility for their blunder yet. Do you suppose they will sometime?

[Vincardog]

4. 5) Insurance company is required to cover everybody

6) Anyone not earning more than 2 X Poverty rate is covered for FREE.

[Hutzpa]

5. No fuckin way! n/t

[tularetom]

6. Regulated monopolies find a way to screw us too

Are you happy with your power company/gas company/phone company/cable TV provider?

If you are on a municipal water system, would you like it privatized?

Even assuming that the insurance vampires would go for this, I'm not sure there are benefits for the consumer.

[Juche]

7. No, and here is why

The big problem with health care is that costs keep going up too fast. A public option is designed to be cheaper than private plans, so private plans are forced to run more efficiently to stay competitive.

The group the commonwealth fund claims we can cut $3 trillion in healthcare costs over a decade, but a public plan is integral to doing that. W/o the public plan, there is no incentive to cut costs. So healthcare costs will continue to grow far too rapidly.

If you could do all that and control costs w/o a public option, then yes I'd be willing to give up the public option.

[liberal N proud]

8. Nothing for the uninsured?

[rvablue]

9. No. It's time for a public option. n/t

[TheKentuckian]

10. That's not what I'm shooting for but I think it would be a lie that

such would not be a substantive change from what we have now. Good? Not really. Worse than doing nothing? Bullshit.

[Taverner]

12. Well yes because we would need one soon

Those measures would shut down the HMOs as they couldn't make a huge huge profit anymore and would get out of the biz. Kind of like Earthquake Insuance in CA.

Granted...that's not such a bad thing...

[damntexdem]

13. If health insurers were regulated like a utility -- they'd all be cleared to build coal-fired plants

;-)