As long as coverage remains in the hands of companies with a fiduciary obligation to attempt to withhold benefit payouts, patients will lose money, and a portion will go bankrupt, not for lack of a policy but from the surprise bills that trickle in after a supposedly covered treatment or procedure.

Feel free to imagine that competition plus regulation will prevent that. But what you’re really arguing is that the entire rest of the world is wrong by adopting predominantly nonprofit (single payer or otherwise) systems.

As per drilling down, maybe you need to go Green and ’see the light’ instead of using the old oily metaphor. :-)

If the gov’t does then you risk all the doctors walking away.
If the docs do, then you save nothing.

There’s no market, no competition, nothing to control costs properly.

And, if they say no more exclusion for prior health issues, then everybody gets covered. And, if they say no more ins. co. doctors interfering in medicine, then quality might go up.

A lot depends upon structure and a lot on all the other incentives and regulations and so on.

wrt Pryor’s idea: Tax credits won’t work unless you pay so much in taxes that a cut would be worth $6K or so. Who pays so much that a cut would produce that?

selise wrote:

… option plan will work with enough detail to estimate things like how much it would cost, how many people are expected to be covered and especially what the regulation for a “level playing field” is going to be?

How many people are to be covered depends entirely upon the concept. Is it an expansion of aid to the poor or a catch-all for those who can’t get employer-based or private insurance they can afford?

If gov’t creates and runs the plan there is the question of how to avoid having it dominate the field and ruin the concept of having competing insurers. If you have gov’t offer a plan and control payout, then there are also philosphical questions of whether you force doctors to accept ONLY that. But, it does cover everyone and control costs before the country goes bankrupt from it. It would also probably be cheaper to run with only one set of administrators. Rahm Emanuel’s brother is a doctor who has spoken against it, saying it would be incredibly risky to do with 300 million people.

selise also wrote that the Dems seem interested in funneling money to the insurance companies.

I don’t understand how you could come to that conclusion. The insurance companies have fought health care reform tooth and nail and don’t support Dems. If a Dem plan favors insurance companies it’s considered a major concession, not desirable. Most Libs hate the idea because they would rather see the ‘blood-suckers’ bankrupted.

Let’s hope his definition of “public plan” isn’t Chuck Schumer’s non-public plan.

Yeah Right Keep Hammering him Jane!

1. Private insurance co. #1 increases it’s profits relative to all its competitors by underwriting. This systematically excludes those most likely to put in a claim for coverage, driving higher cost ‘consumers’ to its competitors.

2. This forces all other private insurance companies to follow, leading to an oligopolistic ‘race to the bottom’ as more and more ‘consumers’ are excluded in the race to maximise profits.

3. 2009: 50 million uninsured and (perhaps) another 30 million seriously underinsured (US population ~ 300 million; $1 in $6 spent on ‘healthcare’ with no end in sight).

4. The only logic left, assuming the ‘unfeasibility’ of single-payer is
to police this madness with a non-private competitor to force an end to this vicious cycle. Given the timing of this push, with the ABSOLUTE political necessity for Obama & the Democrats to show results in 2010/2012, this suggests a mini-’medicare for all’ style solution. This requires enough price padding in premiums to allow continued profitability for the insurance companies.

There simply isn’t enough time to set up 40+ state solutions a la Massachusetts. All this suggests a national public plan will still allow much restricted private co. underwriting with price capping to keep public costs from skyrocketing. No wonder everyone agrees that ‘the devil’s in the details’.

With the like’s of Baucus/Senate Blue Dogs & the insurance co. ‘wholly-owned’ senators like Dodd, threatening the 59/40 balance, there’s every reason for caution. However, as Nelson’s apparent act of self-preservation (along with Wyden’s recent prevarication) shows there’s also no doubt about the strength of the tail winds!