By Shawn Tully
In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.
A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.
If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.
In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.
Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:
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1 comment:
These 5 freedoms that we will be loosing are the root of the reason the USA rates #50 in the world in healthcare. Let's look at these freedoms one at a time.
1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan
- This is a good freedom to have if you can see the future. Some of the benefits that are criticized are prescription drugs, mental health care, and coverage for children until they're 26. How terrible that they make us carry coverage for such unnecessary benefits. Unless your 20 year old college age student becomes severely depressed and needs treatment that includes prescription medication. Then the lose of the freedom to choose not to have coverage for prescription drugs, mental health care, and coverage for children until they're 26 would save the family from bankruptcy.
2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
- The author states that community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care for two reasons. First, young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers pay far more than their actual cost, and older workers get a big discount. This is a good argument if you don't plan on getting old. The idea of insurance is that the cost is shared by all. If everyone paid the actual cost of their health care, what would be the point of insurance? Isn't that just called paying the bill?
Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Same answer as above. The author also seems to be trying to imply that the potential to pay more for insurance in the future will change unhealthy behaviors in the present. What would that look like…. "Wow, I really would like a quarter pounder but I'll have a salad instead because I don't want to pay more for my insurance when I'm 50." That just isn't how people think. The threat of higher insurance is just not going to be the tipping point for people to choose a healthy lifestyle.
3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
- Every year thousands of people's lives are cut short by their inability to pay for routine tests and treatments.
4. Freedom to keep your existing plan
- Our existing plans are designed to make a profit for the insurance company, not to keep us healthy. Our current plans are the reason we rank some where around 50th in the world in health.
5. Freedom to choose your doctors
- If you think you have the freedom to choose your own doctor now, just try it. Right now you have the freedom to choose only what you can afford. If the rate of increase in health care costs is not brought under control very few of us will have the freedom to choose any but the lowest cost, least experienced doctors. The author complains about having to see a primary care doctor for a referral to a specialist. Is it really unacceptable to have your Family Practice doctor make the diagnosis and a referral to the appropriate specialist for the problems that are beyond their level?
These loses aren’t really loses of our freedoms, they are loses of ways that big business insurance companies maximize their profits at our expense.
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