The elimination of a graduated premium, as contained in the House version, means that you cannot be charged more if you have a preexisting condition. Most say, GREAT! But in reality the costs will have to be the same across the board for everyone's premiums. Eventually even private insurance will have to do this. So what happens is they guy who is unhealthy gets to have his premium reduced, the guy who is healthy has his premium go up. Numerous organizations are attempting to figure out what that number is but no one knows for sure. One thing is for sure and that is that it will go up every year. Remember you will be mandated to buy insurance, so if you actually are lucky enough to make money were you get little to no help from the government, where does that money come from? Your pay. Current estimates are between 4 and 10% of your income. Most employer sponsored plans pay between 50-80% of your health insurance and you pay the rest. No one knows what is going to really happen with private insurance, but one thing is sure that in the House version they will pretty much have to offer what the public plan is offering 5 years out.

The bill as fashioned is to cover the under and uninsured. The problem is that it is not fashioned to cover all the people from businesses that may eventually dump their private insurance and tell people to get it on the public plan with employers paying the estimated 8% penalty as a cheaper option. Then costs for the public plan may soar out of control. There is no language in the bill which adresses reimbursement. So if the costs for the new plan goes up, and they cut all reimbursement to a Medicare/Medicaid rate many health care providers will go out of business. Malpractice rates continue to climb every year. Malpractice for an OB doc is between 80 and 120,000 dollars a year. If you run an office there is a lot of overhead. No one could survive the market if all rates were reduced to M/M standards. There are a lot of unanswered questions and left unanswered will lead to unintended consequences.

Isn't that the whole point of insurance? You spread the costs of the sick people around to everyone. The advantage for the healthy person is that they know that if they get sick, there will be someone there to catch them when they fall.

I know I've paid a hell of a lot more into the system than I've gotten out of it. The only reason I have insurance is so that if I get sick, I don't lose my house.

It is and I agree. But when the system does not allow for those with unhealthy habits or preexisting disease your heathly person/family premium will rise to cover the decrease in the other persons. It is the only way it will work. Right or wrong.

I want it to be a rule that denying care doesn't profit anyone, and any rationing is based on necessity and triage. A public plan is closer to that ideal than the current system.

A public plan is still going to be administered by an insurance company. Your care will still be rationed.

Administered. They'll be paid to run it; they won't get to keep any health budget they don't spend.

Closer to the ideal. Not ideal.

Think about it. You think that a private insurance company is going to do this for little to no income and reimbursement? They are going to make millions.

But people who will not have to pay for it really could care less, as long as they get their care it matters not to most who or how much the government pays them.

Whatever their income is, I don't want it to be increased if they deny coverage.

This is good.

Those are nothing more than general goals of the Obama Admin. The Dems are wheeling and dealing with the lobbyists and there is no promise that any of that will actually come to fruition.

Opinion bit from The WSJ.

GovernmentCare’s Assault on Seniors

Continues:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...050552730.html

Folks, you are going to be hoodwinked by backdoor deals the Dems are making with lobbyists...

snip:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

How influence is directed to get what the industry wants in health care reform.

Sorry this is so big.

http://assets.sunlightfoundation.com...fc_health.html

This is great. From the link above. How all the parties, dems, repubs, etc are in on making deals. It is in a Google Map format but with peoples names and their key positions, and the companies with a finger in the pie.

http://www.sunlightfoundation.com/pr...lex/#democrats



In the interest of fairness:

Keep in mind that the Republickins control no committees, neither majority in Congress, nor any other area where they can control the outcome of legislation.