Hillary's health plan will lead many businesses to dump their plans for the government plan

This is the back-door way to single-payer. For most big businesses, it will be simple dollars and cents. If the government offers health care cheaper than the private sector, they will cancel their private plans and offer all their employees the government plan. Over time, unless the insurance industry can compete on cost with the government plan, they will cease to exist.

"Business will have a new set of choices," she said. They'll be able to drop their own plans and opt into the federal system. "I think it would make economic sense for a number of them," she added, "because ... they'll be in a bigger pool and they won't have to pay for the administrative costs they now have." That's a big change for the Clintonistas: back in 1993, they railed against an individual mandate because it would encourage businesses to dump their employee plans.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1663644-2,00.html

...pay in like they do now

need for this byzantine way of going about it. Edward's plan was clearer in it's intent, but I prefer Kucinich's plan.

about tricking enough idiot conservatives into accepting a friendly market based solution that has a trojan horse in it. If insurance companies can't compete on price with the government, the market will force them out of business.

It's the only politically feasible way to get single-payer eventually.

eventually."

Geese, how hard is this? We have to do this NOW , no matter wahtthe insurance industry says. The days of ten companies making 600 million a year profit off of us are coming to a close.

which doesn't bear on the realities of health economics. One of those realities is adverse selection, which means that the private plans will cherry pick from the healthier people and the government plan will get stuck "insuring" those who'll cost the systems many times more.

More profits for insurers, more burden and expense for the government- and ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to contain costs or take administrative waste out of the system. Like the Massachusetts "plan" it's a boodoggle that may well make matters worse.

Either they'll offer insurance, or they won't -- but they won't be able to send only their more expensive employees to the govt. plans.

The companies will go (if they haven't already) to high deductible plans with health savings accounts. (These happen to be more profitable for the insurance companies than the normal comprehensive plans because the deductibles are so high.) Younger, healthier people will opt for the company high-deductible plans because they think they won't get sick. It's also a way for the insurance companies to keep the premium costs down because the high-deductible plans are less than the comprehensive policies.

The less healthy will go with a government plan -- leaving the government plan with the less healthy employees.

I can't believe people are falling for this. It's the SAME argument against the GOP's push for high-deductible policies with HSAs (health savings accounts).

Yes, it's adverse selection. And the insurance companies win.


<edit to add> And people are falling for this... unbelievable.

I will be out the back door and over to the government's front door asking to get into their program in a heart beat if I can. Right now I have cobbled together a way to insure every employee. But I can't add staff because I can not afford to pay any more in medical insurance premiums. I could pay/handle more payroll but not the benefits so I do without new employees. I could also hire more staff and ask the long time employees to pick up part of their insurance costs but I don't want to do that.

To handle my staffing problem I just work longer and longer hours. I am getting near retirement and could, in fact, go ahead and retire now. However, I keep working so my staff has health insurance. My two most loyal and long time employees are diabetic. If I shut my business down I know they will have a hard time because of their pre-existing conditions.

Note: If I find someone who is covered by their spouses or their own medical plan I would hire them in a minute. This relates to Hillary's quote that Drudge and the New York Post got wrong.