My Personal Health Insurance Comparison

The other day I posted about it making the most sense for young healthy people, under Obamacare, to choose the lowest premium plan possible, tied to a health savings account, looking strictly at the numbers involved, and not worrying about what plan had what coverage, and also asked how that might effect the stability of the insurance system in general.

I've since looked at the follow up information that BlueCross-BlueShield sent me regarding my plan options moving forward, so I figured I'd make the comparsion to my current plan.

My current plan is called Blue Edge HSA 100%.  Under this plan, I am given access to either BCBS's PPO network of doctors, or their BlueChoice network of doctors.  My individual deductible on this plan is $1,750, and my coinsurance is 100%, meaning I pay nothing after my deductible.  For this plan, my monthly premium has been $246.08.  This amount includes dental coverage that I tacked on, which if I remember correctly, is about $25/month of this amount.  So if we're comparing health insurance to health insurance, my premium just for health insurance is roughly $221/month.  This has been an individual insurance plan, and so I will compare this to the individual rates of the new plans being offered.  Rates in my article from the other day were quoted for both myself and my wife, and so differ from the rates in this post.

My current plan has been cancelled, and BCBS has sent me a letter indicating that the most similar plan to my current plan is the new Blue PPO Gold 001 plan.  This plan runs $376.40/month, and has a deductible of $3,250.  So for the most similar plan, the monthly premium has increased roughly 170%, and the deductible has also nearly doubled.  I am also limited to only the PPO network.  Even better news, this plan is also not eligible to be used with an HSA.   Here is what this plan offers:

I am also told that Blue PPO Bronze 005 is the most similar in price to what I have today.  This plan is $239.43/month, so they've managed to offer a plan at a similar price.  This plan has a $5,000 deductible, and a coinsurance of 80%, with an out of pocket max of $6,250.  This means that even after I've paid $5,000 in deductibles, I'm still paying 20% of the bills until I've hit $6,250.  This plan does qualify for use with an HSA, and here is what this plan offers, compared side-by-side with the plan above, so we can see how much worse it is on the surface.

There's really not a lot to like about that picture, since what it's really saying is that I might more or less count on coming out of pocket to the tune of $6,250 just about no matter what, because of the 80% coinsurance.  Basically with this policy I'd be cutting checks to BCBS to the tune of $2,873.16 a year for the right to have them tell me I'm paying for everything myself until I've spent $5,000, and then I'm also still paying 20% until I've shelled out another $1,250.  At least I get to have an HSA with this one.  Yay!

Bottom line is, for me, that I'm either paying almost double in premiums, with almost double the deductible, to get similar coverage to what I already have, but can't use an HSA, or I can buy much, much worse coverage for a similar price.

Given the fact that they have another plan called Blue Choice Bronze PPO 006, that turns that litany of 80% coverage into 100% coverages, with a $6,000 deductible and $6,000 out of pocket max, and for only $160.09/month, also HSA eligible, I'm not sure why anyone would bother with something like the Blue PPO 005 above.  At least not a young, healthy person in a big city like me anyway.  If my doctor isn't in the Blue Choice network, I can find one that is.

This obviously becomes much more problematic where people live more spread out.  If someone is stuck with the Blue PPO network of doctors, they're stuck with something like that awful Blue PPO 005, or else instead, for some terrible reason, double the premiums.

Another Market Force within Obamacare

It's been quite some time since I've had the time on my hands, or the ambition to write about any politics here.  I've recently started my own company, and so have a bit better outlook on life in general, and a bit more time on my hands now that I manage my own time as I please.  With that, I've been doing some thinking on this roll-out, or lack thereof, of Obamacare, and I've found something in all this that I'm interested to write about that I think happens to be an angle not many other people are seeing in it.

A great many commentators have been expounding on whether or not Obamacare will collapse under its own weight due to lack of people being able to sign up for it, or people just not signing up and taking the penalty instead.  This may very well end up being the case.  From what I can tell from researching rates over the past week or two, we're all either looking at incredibly high premiums compared to what we're used to, or else incredibly high deductibles compared to what we're used to.  I will note here that I make too much money to qualify for subsidies under the law, so I can't and won't bring those into my discussion of the rates, which works for me, as I wish to focus on this purely as a market analysis anyway, without the government distortion.  With such high premiums, accompanied by de facto poor service in the form of high deductibles, the number of "eff-you" types who will forego coverage for the penalty would seem to be high.

The long view of this idea that Obamacare will collapse under its own weight due to lack of participation, is that with the market unable to support the healthcare needs of the many sick and old, on the backs of the few healthy and young, the left wing will at some point execute the complete takeover of the healthcare system in the form of single payer.

I'm not immune to thinking this myself, and certainly feel that this would be the worst case scenario, resulting in rationing of healthcare, and DMV-like service in the hospitals themselves, not just on the website where you're supposed to be able to sign up for your coverage.

All of this said, I've been spending a good part of the last week or so researching the available plans, and I'm seeing something else happening, that may be more catastrophic both to insurance companies, and the government, than anyone has thought to this point.

YOU ARE REQUIRED TO BUY INSURANCE

Yes, the thought has been that most likely scenario in all of this is that a great many people will forego insurance for the penalty.  However, as Megan McArdle recently pointed out, this will not be so easy.  The penalty is a nominal $95, or 1% of your gross income.  This is next year's figure, and I am sure it will increase over time.

Now, if a person makes $100,000, then the $1,000 penalty tax that has to be paid is really a pittance compared to the amount this person would have to shell out in health insurance premiums, so let's go hypothetical and imagine that the penalty is made high enough to prod people into actually buying insurance, and every single person in the land has to buy insurance, and does.  This hypothetical leads us to examine what policies will be bought en masse across the country.

WHICH PLAN MAKES THE MOST SENSE?

For the purposes of this post, I am going to use information from Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Illinois, both because this is my insurance company and I am most familiar with them, and because when I compare estimates on healthcare.gov (sans subsidy), they are easily the most inexpensive across the board.

Here are the results for plans for my wife and me from Blue Cross-Blue Shield.

Looked at in this manner, we are seeing what the maximum outlay might be if shit really hit the fan and deductible payments were maxed out.  What I look at most closely, however, being a younger, healthy person, is how much money here remains in my own control.  This is where having an HSA kicks in.  Basically, if I am able to afford to stash away the maximum tax-deductible HSA contributions for two years, without having to dip in to the HSA account to pay deductible fees, I am basically no longer coming out of pocket on deductibles in the future.  Granted, of course, I will likely have some small amount of medical expense, so that not everything I pile away into the HSA will stay there over the course of two years, but let's even say in 2.5-3 years, my HSA has enough money in it that if I get hit by a car, I'm not diving into my checking account to cover deductible payments.

This being the case, the market force at play within Obamacare is one that should be driving all the young, healthy people onto low-premium, high deductible "Bronze" level plans, that they can tie to a Health Savings Account.

This is the arrangement I've had set up for myself for three years now, and only the deductible and premiums are really changing here for me.  I will be very interested to see what comes of this system over the course of the next year.  The mandate has the opportunity to force young, healthy people to actually think about their insurance coverage for the first time that I can recall.  From a personal standpoint, I've always had insurance, either through my parents, or through school, or through work.  Three years ago, I became an independent contractor, and had to buy my own insurance.  This was the first time I actually ever looked at any of these plans beyond what the deductible was and what the copay was.  Now millions of other people are going to be in that boat as well.  Unless somebody that is young is also sick with, perhaps, diabetes or some type of other length of life disease, where it will make sense to have more of a "maintenance plan" type of insurance, there really is no conceivable reason why a young person would choose anything but the low premium, high deductible, HSA combination.

And so my question is, what happens then to the structure of this program?

If everyone who is healthy enough to forego a "maintenance" insurance plan chooses to do so (and why wouldn't they?), my early assumption has to be that the insurance industry will be unable to support the older sicker people based on the lack of premium revenue.  The whole idea here was to force everyone to buy insurance, raise premiums, and use the higher premiums on healthy people to pay for sicker peoples' maintenance insurance.  But if younger people in general go the route of paying the bare minimum into the insurance pool as possible, instead contributing to their own HSA accounts, and the deductibles be damned, doesn't this eventually pull just as big of a Jenga piece out from the foundational levels of the scheme as people just not signing up anyway?

I do recognize that the more immediate problems with the system, such as not being able to sign up, and having no real financial reason to sign up due to the extremely low penalty, are likely to drive this train off the rails much sooner than my scenario.  However, I also think that my scenario is another one that dooms this system as well.  Ironically, however, taken to the next logical step in the long view, the market response would be to increase deductibles further, meaning that people would be much, much more inclined to begin actually shopping for their healthcare, rather than just showing up and expecting to be serviced for no charge, meaning that in the long run, prices to the consumer might actually come down as the healthcare industry would finally again be required to service the consumer rather than throw a fat bill at the insurance company's wall to see what sticks.  Over the long term, proponents might actually trumpet to the heavens that the program has worked!

But I wouldn't give our government the credit for such foresight or patience as to wait for all of that to come to fruition.  If they had the foresight or patience for that, they'd have simply written a program that majorly incentivized people to get onto HSA's, and opened up the insurance markets across state lines, giving people more freedom and choice.  But the government response to a market response of insurance prices going up will surely be one instead of further control, perhaps to put some kind of fiat cap on deductibles, and eliminate HSA eligible plans, putting us all on more expensive maintenance insurance, leading to the necessity to increase the subsidy to lower income citizens, or perhaps even broadening the criteria for acceptance onto Medicaid (which is already looming large as a major wrench in the works).

Ultimately, this would also mean the healthcare industry will continue to overcharge for services, since there will continue to be no price feedback from the actual consumer.

Waking the Dead

Not that I am one to talk about slacking on one's blogging, but I find it hard to believe I actually beat ZephOmega to this one, so allow me to gloat with a slight chortle, as I bring you another installment "Why It's Officially the Future" before he does. Folks, we are moving ever closer to becoming Borg, as scientists have begun using machines for the purpose of waking the dead:

Surgeons made cadavers blink with artificial muscles, experiments that could in the future help restore the ability of thousands of patients with facial paralysis to open and close their eyes on their own.

If that weren't cool enough, let's remember that medicine in general already has two methods for fixing the condition of being unable to blink.

Without lubrication from the blinking lid, the eye can develop ulcers and the person can eventually go blind. Currently, eyelid paralysis is treated by one of two approaches. One is to transfer a muscle from the leg into face. However, this option requires six to 10 hours of surgery, creates a wound that can impair the body elsewhere, and is not always suitable for elderly or medically fragile patients.

"I would estimate under 100 of those are done in the United States every year," said researcher Craig Senders, an otolaryngologist at the University of California at Davis. The other treatment involves suturing a small gold weight inside the eyelid, which helps close the eye with the aid of gravity. Although such therapy is successful in more than 90 percent of patients, the resulting blink is slower than normal and cannot be synchronized with the opposite eye, and some patients also have a hard time keeping the weighted lid closed when lying down to sleep.

In the United States, roughly 3,000 to 5,000 patients undergo this surgery every year.

Now, though I did beat ZephOmega to this information, I'm certainly not him in that I don't look at stuff like this for the sake of it being interesting. So while it does happen to be cool as hell, I've got to be the one to point out that this is the kind of stuff that comes out of our current, capitalistic healthcare system.

"But...but...the people that figured this out are scientists at UC Davis, a public university. That's not part of your precious capitalism at all!"

Forgive me for bogarting Glenn Beck's Arguing with Idiots format, but it's very useful. Yes, those are public monies funding research at a public university. But that's not what makes this a capitalist discovery. What makes this discovery part of our successful capitalist way of doing things, is that somebody somewhere figured this out, and now it is available for others to put to good use. It is the same logic behind the infamous short essay, "I, Pencil," that outlines the enormously complex process by which a pencil is assembled and brought to you in the store for pocket change.

What also makes this part of our successful capitalist way of doing things is that, if you might imagine for a moment a government panel of some sort in charge of directing research & development looking over some eager scientist's application for funds to begin work on this artificial muscle project, what would be the panel's impetus to even approve the application? They would look at the fact that there are already two ways to solve this problem, and that the number of cases in total is fairly low per year on the whole, and would decide that funding to begin this research is not economically viable for the system.

Instead, we have a system where somebody somewhere, in this case UC Davis, decided that it was worth the expense to have their staff research this problem and create an even better solution than already existed. Yes, it was a public university using public funds. However, the decision was made in an effort to improve not only medicine, but the image of the university as well. This is the rational self interest by which capitalism drives innovation, even when public money is involved. No consideration to the health of the entire system was given because none needed to be. Only if our health system is ever centralized under governmental authority will we see innovation such as this disappear.

Generate Your Own Healthcare Amendment

Today, Senator Bernie Sanders introduced an amendment to the healthcare bill currently being debated on the Senate Floor. When the motion to introduce the amendment as written was raised, Senator Tom Coburn objected. This forced the entire 767 page amendment to be read on the floor, a process so far estimated to take between 12 and 36 hours.

As this process takes place, with the amendment being read by what I suppose is a series of clerks, it seems an ingenious stall tactic to me that Republicans could continue this process in lieu of filibustering for as long as they can come up with amendments. And here is where the vast usefulness of the internet comes into play.

In the spirit of the now infamous SCIgen website, that was created to randomly generate gibberish scientific papers in the name of exposing fraud in the peer review process, I assumed there must be something similar for creating randomly generated legalese. Lo and behold, a few minutes of Googling brought me to The Lorem Ipsum Smorgasbord.

All one need do here is define the number of sentences one wants generated, between 1 and 10,000, and the site spits out piles of legal-style gibberish, looking like this:

The maintenance of any kind incurred by the Committee. Licensee shall be deemed a deferral accounts, if the Date OF each of all of THE TERM of any action which the Warrant Certificate issued and Appointment by it deems necessary or other agreements, understandings. Each award in whole or a calendar year following the services are received of Berkshire or responsibility for the Warrant Certificate, with respect to the terms and the Committee shall have no Stock Option shall be required in the fair market System and CHARACTERS (IMAGE) licensed PRODUCT(S) during the exercise and serve at the Warrant certificates to or firm affiliated with State of a quarterly royalty payments set forth in this Agreement by the person is made, shares or product or any time the Company, the other capacity, may from the consent to the preparation of Stock dividend or "SALES" to obtain and administer and shall be in connection with respect to be the number of this Agreement, should the Company.

Now obviously this isn't about healthcare, but given the fact that Bernie Sanders' amendment had no chance of passing, and it's being read anyway, we can safely assume that the move is all about strategy, regardless of content. In fact, since this site would generate thousands of sentences of gibberish at a time, at least anybody watching the process on C-Span would at least be highly entertained by the clerks stumbling through the nonsense!

Public Option Lemonade

The reality of the Public Option, explained in 41 seconds.

OR

How the Government makes little girls cry.



HT: Cato Twitter

Free Market Healthcare

"We have this insane system now, where you need healthcare, you're the buyer. I'm the doctor, I'm the seller of healthcare, and someone else pays the bill. Who the heck is gonna shop for price when somebody else is payin' the bill?"

That's the money quote to start off this fantastic clip from Reason.tv, that implores us to follow the Lasik model for the rest of healthcare. Enjoy!

Why Less Government is the Right Way to Fix Health Care

Eline van den Broek, founder of the, European Independent Institute, a Netherlands-based free market think tank, presents a video for the Center for Freedom & Prosperity, discussing why less government, not more, is the solution for fixing healthcare. Enjoy!

Cross-posted at Examiner (click to earn me a whole penny!)

Choice & Competition

Choice and competition. Choice and competition. Choice and competition.

Such were the words President Obama last night claimed were his core principles in providing affordable health insurance for all. As a means to providing choice and competition, the President said, we should institute a public option that doesn't have to deal with such pesky things like highly paid executives and all that extra "wasted" money that constitutes the evil bane of man's pitiful existence, PROFIT.

As I read today that Andrew Sullivan considers those of us on the Right side of this argument over health care reform to be intellectually bankrupt for wanting to see tort reform take place, calling it the "crown jewel of Republican cost control," as if this was the only thing that has been proposed by either the Republican party, or anyone else on the Right, I am as frustrated now as I have been silent throughout the entire healthcare debate. I have been relatively silent throughout the process as I have, quite frankly, not had time to sit down and pore over the bill on my own, and many others have done quite a sufficient enough job of it that I felt my voice would not be as purposeful. But Sullivan, as is often the case, knows full well how to push buttons, and whether he knows or cares who I am, he has managed to push one of mine.

The very thought on his part, and it is a thought that is widely held by those on the Left, is twofold. Part A is to point out that everyone that is remotely on the Right side of an issue is stupid. Part B, when confronted by the impossibility of someone on the Right side of an issue who can both read and infer consequences via logic, is to deride them, sneeringly when possible, as a Neocon, or oftentimes in a sophomoric twist, just a "con" and therefore a liar, and then to declare the argument over.

Perhaps if Sullivan and his ilk were to remove their ears from betwixt the President's legs, they might hear his words.

Yes We Can. Yes We Can. Yes We Can.

Choice and competition. Choice and competition. Choice and competition.

As of last night it is the President's own new mantra. But it is a mantra as empty and as meaningless as was the one that won him the presidency. A government option would do no more at offering people choice and competition than the post office offers to Fedex or UPS or DHL. Those companies are in the business of providing a service that the post office cannot: reliability. Do they do it at a higher price than the post office? Of course they do. They're doing it at real market prices, not subsidized-by-the-taxpayers prices. But if I send a letter out in a Fedex envelope and pay the money they ask for it to be there first thing tomorrow morning, it will be there first thing tomorrow morning. This is not something that the post office can provide, and this is why we pay Fedex or UPS or DHL.

Allow me to stay on these terms. Let's say that I live in Illinois, and I have the post office available to me as an option, along with Fedex, UPS and DHL. Fedex, UPS and DHL are not competing with the post office on price, and are not attempting to. Instead they are competing with each other. Each of them have rates that are very easy to find out, and for the most part, are competitive on pricing with each other. All are reliably delivering the next day for $20, and you can track those deliveries step-by-step to their location until they are signed for by their receipient. The post office is delivering for $0.43, assuming you can wait a few days and assuming you don't mind if the mailman maybe takes it to the wrong place or loses it.

Now let us imagine that there are 100 other companies in the United States that provide the service that Fedex, UPS and DHL provide. All 100 of those companies are able to provide the same service for less money. I should be able to solicit those services from one of those 100 other companies instead. But let us imagine that the law of the land is that I am not allowed to. That being the case, Fedex, UPS and DHL are all perfectly content to continue charging me $20, blissfully immune to the existence of the post office, since they know they are providing a better service no matter what. The only way for me to get service that is as good or better is to go to a company outside of Illinois. The only way for this to happen is to change the law.

This is the situation we find ourselves in with the law of the land pertaining to insurance companies. There are 1,300 insurance companies in the United States providing health insurance. That's an average of 26 insurance companies per state. It makes zero sense whatsoever that I should not have access to 1,274 more insurance companies.

That would be choice.

That would be competition.

New Universal Healthcare Plan

Healthcare Van

Look at the way the overtly professional styling of the lettering distracts your eye from the dented fender. Obviously this van could only possibly have been commissioned by the big, bad insurance companies!

Obamacare's First Death Panel

Real life thuggery. 'Nuff said. Thankfully it was only attempted murder.

Three people posed as insurance agents hawking President Obama's health-care reform plan to gain entry to a Long Island home, where they pistol-whipped, shot and robbed two women and a man, authorities said.

Vance Jackson, 46, of Yonkers, and Benjamin Thompson, of Brooklyn, were arraigned yesterday in Central Islip on attempted-murder and burglary charges.

A female accomplice, Natalie Taylor, 26, of Nyack, is expected to be arraigned today. The men were nabbed about a mile from the Huntington crime scene in an SUV, and Taylor was apprehended a few hours later, police said.

Prosecutors said Thompson and Taylor approached a home on Virginia Avenue at around noon Friday, and then began to talk about Obama's policies, while Jackson pushed into the door seeking cash.

Taylor allegedly pistol-whipped one woman, and Thompson shot another in the foot as Jackson led the man upstairs to retrieve some cash.

"When he didn't get enough money, he shot the man twice in the neck, once in the back, and once in the chest," said a Suffolk County prosecutor at the men's arraignment.

Hat Tip: Sweetness & Light

Chicagobama

Abraham Miller pens an article today for American Thinker that begins to shed a much brighter light on the surge of Chicago machine politics to the national stage than has really been shone thus far. To be sure, I have blogged about some of Obama's tactics, particularly his dealings with and treatment of the media. Basically, when asked questions that require actual thought and real leadership-style answers, he all too conveniently relies on Mayor Daley's approach of berating the press.

The light that Miller shines in his article, while being brighter for being on American Thinker (as compared to my small efforts), is also more focused on the real machinations of the behemoth that is Chicago. A professor of politics specializing in ethnic politics, Miller has studied Chicago extensively, and is able to focus us in on what really matters. While many of us debate the high level business concerns, Miller brings us back to street level, explaining the down-and-dirty nature of this political machine:

Talk-radio host Sean Hannity can trumpet medical savings accounts on one day and talk about the forty percent of Americans who don't pay taxes the next, and he will be immune to the inconsistency because Hannity's listeners are taxpayers. But a medical savings account means nothing if you don't pay taxes.

If you don't pay taxes and don't have health insurance, you want a card in your wallet that says someone else is going to pay. You want a medical savings account and tort reform about as much as you want another Chicago winter in an unheated apartment.

If you grow up poor and minority, everyone else's gain is ill-gotten. You expect the people you elect to take from them and give to you. If they don't, then there is no point in electing them. You might as well stay home on Election Day.

Michele Malkin is upset that David Axelrod's firm is doing the public relations for Obama Care. Michele Malkin is a superb intellectual analyst of Chicago politics, but she has no visceral feel for it. When Mayor Richard J. Daley was confronted about the city's insurance business going to a sole-source brokerage run by his sons, he responded that there would be no point in being in politics if he couldn't throw a little business to his children. Why would Axelrod be in politics if he couldn't profit from it?

The emphasis added is my own. Here is the problem when taking the stance against healthcare. As we argue items like freedom of the marketplace, liberty of the individual, taxes and opening up competition across state lines, there remains the fact that we stray away from our visceral feel of Chicago politics. Indeed there is no greater example than Chicago for the concept of Organized Exploitation. As Miller points out, those people waiting for an insurance card are, to The Machine, simply statistics to be exploited.

If you want to understand Obama's health care policy, you need to start where Obama starts. You need to start with Chicago. You need to look at constituent interests.

Obama won in 2008 because, among other things, he mobilized the electoral periphery. He mobilized young voters and minority voters, people who traditionally had a lower probability of showing up on Election Day. Chicago politics is about mobilizing the vote. "Vote early and often" is the city's sardonic refrain.

Obama needs his newly socialized base. He needs them to keep coming to the polls. In the vein of Chicago politics, he needs to deliver benefits to them.

Unrewarded, the electoral periphery will revert back to apathy. Health care is a reward to this base of people who are on the economic as well as political periphery.

There is little doubt that our health care system in general requires reform. As Miller points out, along with many others, this does not require 1,000+ pages of legislation added to a government that is already nothing short of Leviathan. But, as Miller notes:

...building a new power base resulting from the mobilization of the political and economic periphery requires redefining the nation's health problems as the nation's health catastrophe.

Health reform is Chicago politics on a national level. Welcome to the city.

At least our skyline is gorgeous.

House Healthcare Scavenger Hunt

Today is a rainy day here in Chicago, and there's not that much to do. If you, like me, are in need of something to while away the hours, why not play along in the coolest new game on the intertubes? I give you the House Healthcare Scavenger Hunt. Enjoy!

Hat Tip: Doug Bandow, C4L

Cash for Clunkers: Obamacare Edition

Let the ad campaign begin!



































HT: Modern Conservative

Prescription for Healthcare? The Free Market

Peter Schiff is dead on again, as he appears on Fox Business.



HT: BTB

The Effects of Socialized Medicine

The timeless words of Ronald Reagan.

Government Healthcare: Lost Options

Because there's a lot that government insurance just won't cover:

A nice, calm and respectable lady went into the pharmacy, walked up to the pharmacist, looked straight into his eyes, and said, "I would like to buy some cyanide."

The pharmacist asked, "Why in the world do you need cyanide?"

The lady replied, "I need it to poison my husband..."

The pharmacist's eyes got big and he exclaimed, "Lord have mercy! I can't give you cyanide to kill your husband. That's against the law! I'll lose my license!

They'll throw both of us in jail! All kinds of bad things will happen. Absolutely not! You CANNOT have any cyanide!"

The lady reached into her purse and pulled out a picture of her husband in bed with the pharmacist's wife.

The pharmacist looked at the picture and replied, "Well now, that's different. You didn't tell me you had a prescription."

Daniel Hannan on Obamacare

Leave it to a member of the British European Parliament to have more respect for the US Constitution than almost anyone in our own government.



HT: BTB

Healthcare Freedom

There are a lot of questions swirling around the healthcare debate right now, not the lease of which is how much it's going to cost, both in terms of pricetag and in reduction of quality through rationing. But there's one issue that's really been bothering me of late that has nothing to do with the end result, and everything to do with the arguments that are being made for the public "option" by those on the Left.

The gist of the argument in question is to expound on how terrible it is that people lack freedom of mobility in the workplace.

The details of this argument boil down to the situation where, for instance, I might have fantastic coverage at my current job, but want to go work somewhere else because it offers a better opportunity, or perhaps I am just unhappy where I am. But the other companies I might work for have lesser, or no, health coverage. I find myself therefore, jailed in the workplace, chained to a job I do not want because of the insurance coverage. The public option, the proponents tell me, would allow me not to have to worry about this.

This was a tenuous argument at best a few weeks ago. Now that we come to find that the public "option" disallows employer coverage from accepting new enrollees, the argument should be obliterated.

Even presupposing that the private insurance market could still remain in tact, which it could not, if I cannot go to work for a company that offers better health coverage than the public "option" and enroll in that better coverage, my freedom of mobility in the marketplace has been just as limited, if not moreso, than it supposedly already is.

Currently, I have the freedom to choose whether or not to take that new job and risk the fact that I take on a lesser insurance coverage. In fact, I have done this in the past, actually to work where I work now, because the work was more exciting than the work we were doing at my previous place of employ. I gathered this to be a reasonable risk to take due to the fact that I am young and healthy. But I currently also retain the option to leave this company, for the same salary, or perhaps a slightly lesser salary, should health coverage become a more weighted factor in my decision making. Perhaps I get older and decide I want better coverage with a lower deductible. I have the option to work for a larger company that provides a better plan than where I am now.

If the public "option" limits this freedom of choice, and my current employer offers a program that is just as good or even one penny better than that public "option" I am just as chained to this company as I ever might have been without a public "option," if not moreso.

To tell the American people that a public option somehow increases their freedom in the workplace is nothing less than a lie.

The Public Plan Deception

Barack Obama is on the verge of starting a media assault on the American Public promoting his nationalized healthcare agenda, and in typical Orwellian fashion, he'll be telling us it's all about the competition. It's got nothing to do with competition. It's got everything to do with a forceful government takeover of yet another industry. I will be starting my own research and analsyses of the programs being discussed, as well as Obama's propaganda campaign set to begin next Wednesday on ABC shortly. In the meantime, the guys at Verumserum have put together a great video exposing the fraudulent claim that a public plan has anything to do with competition.

Enjoy, and pass it along!