SUMMARY: The Baucus boondoggle:
1) Will be sold to dems as a STEPPING STONE TO SINGLE PAYER, WHEN IT IS NOT.
2) Creates mandatory insurance in order to SAVE BIG INSURANCE
3) Imposes FINES on the uninsured that are funneled back into BIG INSURANCE coffers
4) portrays the UNINSURED as DEADBEATS, not as VICTIMS
5) "In fact, the original paper Edwards and the folks in Massachusetts were backing made it clear that the idea was to SAVE the private health insurance INDUSTRY by strengthening their profits in order to PREVENT single payer and squeezing revenue from the people who fall between the cracks, like we do when lotteries pay for schools."
6) Fly by night insures will be set up to scam people into buying 'insurance' that will NEVER PAY A DIME.
Thanks Leopolds Ghost! Personally, I think these issues apply to HR3200 as well. We should scrap these scams and go back to single payer, IMHO.
http://pnhp.orgI read an extensive article about Mass plan back when Edwards was talking to Brookings Inst about it
(Posted by Leopolds Ghost)
Long before this hoopla.
The article made clear that it was an industry written paper (with industry-crafted $$ figures to determine how an individual mandate would save the health insurance industry by carefully calibrating the percentage driven to private versus public health care) and it described in detail (with sidebars and links to the Brookings paper) how the percentage who chose public health option would be required to be a small Matrix-style percentage of those who took the blue pill of accepting private coverage, since taxes on the new PRIVATE insurance consumers would go to pay for the few who got left behind.
An in between amount of people who do not qualify is built-in; much like Greenspan's "cushion of unemployed people" that he noted was necessary to sustain the US economy, these percentage get fined, and the fines ALSO (SIGNIFICANTLY) help pay for the limited public option as well as subsidies for the for-profit health industry to accept new guidelines;
The SHEER AMOUNT of the fine is calibrated on the basis of how many people the insurance lobbyists wanted to funnel into new private policies (vast majority) by using the fines to pay for the public option (the people who fall in neither and get fined pay for the latter,)
which incentivizes most to purchase existing private plans unless they have a "reason not to" according to the original math
they sold this bill to the Dems with, thus proving the notion that this was a stepping stone or stalking horse for single payer -- an "elegant lie" told to a target audience of progressives. It's EXACTLY the same way they sell transit improvements by making it clear that a consistent 90% of funds will go to parallel highway improvements, so if transit funding goes up, highway funding is protected, thereby justifying transit as an overflow valve benefiting motorists.
In the same way, the public option in this bill is designed (mathematically and actuarially) as an overflow valve.
In fact, the original paper Edwards and the folks in Massachusetts were backing made it clear that the idea was to SAVE the private health insurance INDUSTRY by strengthening their profits in order to PREVENT single payer.
and squeezing revenue from the people who fall between the cracks, like we do when lotteries pay for schools.
It also argued (and Hillary Clinton backed this up) that the majority of uninsured were "choice" consumers (ie. "deadbeats") who had irresponsibly "chosen" not to purchase when they could afford to, and could be charged more if forced to purchase (since they were being inelastically driven to purchase), thereby allowing them to charge existing consumers the same and not jack up the rates as baby boomers retire. Of course, those with prexisting conditions (who are being inelastically driven to purchase private health coverage -- the very OPPOSITE of trying to help these people) will also be charged more, we'd be fools not to think so.
Indeed, the plan is designed to increase insurance industry profits, i.e. revenues will go UP from all the uninsured being forced to purchase health insurance.
(I expect the US to mandate purchase of individual property and liability insurance next. DC and other "liberal" jurisdictions are already implementing the 15-year Gingrich plan to eliminate welfare and essentially criminalize non-property ownership.)
The Mass plan was held up as a model of the Brookings(?) plan in the same way the fact that there is no rent controlled housing in Boston thanks to Romney and "no one has suffered adversely" is held up as a model. When the alternative is a fine or imprisonment, people pay more for the necessities of life. Singapore is the ultimate model of the "individual responsibility" society.
I'm not saying Edwards and Brookings think tank (a war supporter) are in bed with the Health Industry lobbyists: These guys are Dems who came on to them first! The lobbyists publically said they wrote the package with out of power Dems as an overture on the basis that the insurance industry would go broke by the time Bush was finished and baby boomers retire. These guys are now staunch industry allies of the Democratic leadership.
(and yes, we need a link to the original paper)
Here is another brilliant post By the Ghost:
Read up on these "health services purchasing clubs" they're even worse.
Edited on Sat Sep-26-09 03:08 AM by Leopolds Ghost
They pretend to be insurance cos and I got put on their marketing list when I recently went shopping for individual health care and the blue-chip agencies sold my info to the marketers. Nearly got suckered in by one, and I am a very skeptical person. They had a fake fly-by-night website (complete with rotating fake office locations and ever changing names for their company and officers) that obfuscates their real website! They pretend to HAVE a deductible when in fact they aren't insurance at all and aren't required to pay you anything. And they're legal in many states and have friends in Congress - the new face of corruption I guess. People like me will be screwed to the wall under the new plan since the blue-chips will have no incentive whatsoever to cover me with 40 million person waiting list of required-by-law customers and a 10 million person waiting list for a downgraded public option that is run BY the same companies and paid for out of fines.
Check this one out:
Consumer Health Benefits Association - what a fraud!
http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/consumer-heal...
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