With "Super Tuesday" upon us, I am once again bringing back a post that argues there is little difference among the candidates in each of their respective parties.
My suggestion is that you not cast your caucus or primary vote for a candidate based upon their health care reform plan.
From “thirty thousand feet” the leading Republicans are offering much the same health care policy ideas—a more vibrant market serving a more responsible consumer who would control his health care choices in a system that doesn’t need to spend more money.
And, from that same "thirty thousand feet," the two remaining Democrats are all offering about the same thing--$100 billion+ in new annual spending to guarantee access for virtually all Americans to existing public and private health plan options as well as some new ones created by the government.
Republicans support an open market—no mandates and less insurance regulation—believing that the market must first get costs under control by developing new and more efficient offerings for people in the private market based on consumer-driven principles and new and more efficient and appealing options for people who have public coverage as well.
Democrats call for shared responsibility—often mandating employers and consumers to participate in their near universal system made up of Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, private individual coverage offered through government-run marketing structures, a Medicare-like government plan option for those under age-65, and existing employer plans.
I hate to say that it doesn’t really matter which of the Democrats, or Republicans, wins their separate primary battles. But in terms of the nits health care policy it really doesn’t.
Sure there are differences in their health care policy proposals. Among the Democrats, Obama doesn't have an individual mandate to buy coverage while Clinton does. Among the Republicans, McCain uses a tax credit to help people buy coverage while Romney talks about tax deductions.
But remember, these are political proposals--generally just a few pages long. The real health reform process will eventually have to go through the legislative "sausage factory" that is Congress and I will suggest that the starting point from one Democrat compared to another, or one Republican compared to another, is hardly material.
As you prepare to vote in your state's caucus or primary, I would recommend that you focus on the other issues that are important to you, the "electability" of each of the candidates, and perhaps most importantly on the issue of health care, which of these candidates can finally break the health care reform logjam and get something done.
Whoever the eventual nominee is in each of the parties, we will have a Democrat and a Republican offering a dramatically different approach to American health care security.
The general election is where the big decision will be made on health care--and everything else.
You can see my analysis of each of the candidates plans by using the index in the right column.
Showing posts with label Thompson Health Plan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thompson Health Plan. Show all posts
Monday, February 4, 2008
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Republican Candidates Wouldn't Have Been Able To Get Coverage Under Their Own Health Reform Plans
Republican presidential candidates have called for a greater reliance upon the individual health insurance market. But many of these same candidates have had cancer and wouldn't have been able to get individual coverage under their own health reform plans at the time of their treatment.
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar had a great story in the Los Angeles Times recently.
Ricardo points out that Rudy Giuliani has had prostate cancer, John McCain melanoma, and Fred Thompson has had lymphoma.
All have called for a more robust individual health insurance market. But that market today relies upon medical underwriting--people who have had cancer will have great difficulty finding an insurance company to underwrite them. As the Times reports, "Cancer survivors -- even if they have been free of disease for several years -- are routinely denied health insurance when they try to purchase it as individuals."
If coverage is offered, it often comes with restrictions on the disease the person suffered with or high premiums.
Even after being treatment free for five years it's hard to get coverage. Ricardo cited a survey of 22 insurance companies Karen Pollitz did at Georgetown University about a hypothetical breast cancer survivor who was five years out from a successful treatment. "Eleven companies said they would deny coverage, and six said they would issue a policy at standard rates. One company said it would charge double the usual premium. Another said it would issue a policy but exclude future cancer treatment. Three insurers did not respond."
Romney goes even further than the other Republicans by calling for less regulation in the state-based individual health insurance market then we have today.
Employer plans generally cover all new employees--albeit with as much as a one-year pre-existing condition provision if the new employee did not have prior coverage. However, all of the Republicans provide tax incentives that would move coverage away from the employer model and onto the individual model.
No one should be able to wait to approach an insurance company until they are sick and expect to get coverage--they should have bought it in the first place. But when individual coverage costs thousands of dollars a year, many can't afford to get it. Some people lose their jobs and their coverage.
Lots of people are out there without health insurance coverage and it has nothing to do with personal irresponsibility.
Today's COBRA might help--an 18 month extension for a worker who has left their employer so long as they can afford the full cost of their employer's plan--which averaged $12,000 a year for family coverage in 2007.
A reformed health insurance system based upon an individual insurance model can work. However, the Republican candidates have not closed the loop on how they would make it affordable for people to buy coverage in the first place or how they would overcome medical underwriting and age-rating that are now at the core of this business model.
Good thing these guys didn't get laid off, lose their coverage, and have to go find individual coverage under their own health reform plans!
You can access my review of each of the candidates' health plans in the column to the right.
Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar had a great story in the Los Angeles Times recently.
Ricardo points out that Rudy Giuliani has had prostate cancer, John McCain melanoma, and Fred Thompson has had lymphoma.
All have called for a more robust individual health insurance market. But that market today relies upon medical underwriting--people who have had cancer will have great difficulty finding an insurance company to underwrite them. As the Times reports, "Cancer survivors -- even if they have been free of disease for several years -- are routinely denied health insurance when they try to purchase it as individuals."
If coverage is offered, it often comes with restrictions on the disease the person suffered with or high premiums.
Even after being treatment free for five years it's hard to get coverage. Ricardo cited a survey of 22 insurance companies Karen Pollitz did at Georgetown University about a hypothetical breast cancer survivor who was five years out from a successful treatment. "Eleven companies said they would deny coverage, and six said they would issue a policy at standard rates. One company said it would charge double the usual premium. Another said it would issue a policy but exclude future cancer treatment. Three insurers did not respond."
Romney goes even further than the other Republicans by calling for less regulation in the state-based individual health insurance market then we have today.
Employer plans generally cover all new employees--albeit with as much as a one-year pre-existing condition provision if the new employee did not have prior coverage. However, all of the Republicans provide tax incentives that would move coverage away from the employer model and onto the individual model.
No one should be able to wait to approach an insurance company until they are sick and expect to get coverage--they should have bought it in the first place. But when individual coverage costs thousands of dollars a year, many can't afford to get it. Some people lose their jobs and their coverage.
Lots of people are out there without health insurance coverage and it has nothing to do with personal irresponsibility.
Today's COBRA might help--an 18 month extension for a worker who has left their employer so long as they can afford the full cost of their employer's plan--which averaged $12,000 a year for family coverage in 2007.
A reformed health insurance system based upon an individual insurance model can work. However, the Republican candidates have not closed the loop on how they would make it affordable for people to buy coverage in the first place or how they would overcome medical underwriting and age-rating that are now at the core of this business model.
Good thing these guys didn't get laid off, lose their coverage, and have to go find individual coverage under their own health reform plans!
You can access my review of each of the candidates' health plans in the column to the right.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Fred Thompson—Too Good to Be True? Thompson Says He Will Shake Things Up In the Health Care Debate
The Washington Post’s David Broder is one of those people I have only the greatest respect for. So his recent column, recounting an interview with soon to be Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, caught my eye.
Broder described a Fred Thompson that sounds too good to be true:
“When Fred Thompson makes his long-delayed entrance into the Republican presidential race, he will not tiptoe quietly. Instead, he will try to shake up the establishment candidates of both parties by depicting a nation at peril from fiscal and security threats—and prescribing tough cures that he says others shrink from offering.”
He quotes Thompson as saying he, “will take some risks that others are not willing to take, in terms of forcing a dialogue on our entitlement situation, our military situation and what it’s going to cost” to ensure our nation’s future.
“There’s no reason for me to run just to be president,” Broder quoted Thompson as saying. “I don’t desire the emoluments of the office. I don’t want to live a lie and clever my way to the nomination or election.”
Thompson said in the interview that he would have opposed the Medicare Part D prescription drug program, “a 17 trillion add-on to a program that’s going bankrupt.”
Referring to the crisis that is looming over America’s out-of-control entitlement costs, “Nobody in Congress on either side in the presidential race wants to deal with it. So we just rock along and try to maintain the status quo. Republicans say keep the tax cuts; Democrats say keep the entitlements. And we become a less unified country in the process, with a tax code that has become an unholy mess, and all we do is tinker around the edges.”
Referring to national security and the fiscal crisis of an aging society with runaway health care costs, Broder quotes Thompson as saying these challenges, “are worth a portion of a man’s life. If I can’t get elected talking that way, I probably don’t deserve to be elected.”
Is Fred Thompson too good to be true?
Speaking of "clevering" your way along, see my recent post: Good Riddance to Karl Rove--How Part D Left an $8 Trillion Debt and Got Them Nothing
Broder described a Fred Thompson that sounds too good to be true:
“When Fred Thompson makes his long-delayed entrance into the Republican presidential race, he will not tiptoe quietly. Instead, he will try to shake up the establishment candidates of both parties by depicting a nation at peril from fiscal and security threats—and prescribing tough cures that he says others shrink from offering.”
He quotes Thompson as saying he, “will take some risks that others are not willing to take, in terms of forcing a dialogue on our entitlement situation, our military situation and what it’s going to cost” to ensure our nation’s future.
“There’s no reason for me to run just to be president,” Broder quoted Thompson as saying. “I don’t desire the emoluments of the office. I don’t want to live a lie and clever my way to the nomination or election.”
Thompson said in the interview that he would have opposed the Medicare Part D prescription drug program, “a 17 trillion add-on to a program that’s going bankrupt.”
Referring to the crisis that is looming over America’s out-of-control entitlement costs, “Nobody in Congress on either side in the presidential race wants to deal with it. So we just rock along and try to maintain the status quo. Republicans say keep the tax cuts; Democrats say keep the entitlements. And we become a less unified country in the process, with a tax code that has become an unholy mess, and all we do is tinker around the edges.”
Referring to national security and the fiscal crisis of an aging society with runaway health care costs, Broder quotes Thompson as saying these challenges, “are worth a portion of a man’s life. If I can’t get elected talking that way, I probably don’t deserve to be elected.”
Is Fred Thompson too good to be true?
Speaking of "clevering" your way along, see my recent post: Good Riddance to Karl Rove--How Part D Left an $8 Trillion Debt and Got Them Nothing
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