Why Not Single Payer? What's Wrong With The Clinton / Obama / Edwards Health Care Plans

In Part 1 of this multi-part Huffpost series on the health care debate, I criticized the leading Democratic candidates — Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards — for surrendering, without firing a shot, to the insurance and drug companies by opposing universal single payer health care.

In this second installment, I elaborate on the difference between universal single payer health care and the Clinton/Obama/Edwards universal insurance mandate plans and argue that universal mandates are bad social policy.

First, let’s define our terms:

“Universal Single Payer Health Care” (aka “Medicare For All”): From the moment that you’re born until the moment that you die, you will be covered by single quasi-public non-profit health insurer that will pay for both preventative care and for all necessary medical procedures and medications. You choose whatever doctor you want to see and you and your doctor decide on the care you need. It won’t matter whether you’re employed or not or whether your employer offers health coverage. You can never be denied insurance.

“Universal Insurance Mandate:” If you like your employer’s health plan, you can keep it. If your employer doesn’t provide health insurance and you don’t qualify for Medicaid, the government will make you pay for your own health insurance out of your own pocket. If you’re too poor to afford the premiums, at tax time every year the government will give you a credit to reimburse you for part of last year’s premiums. If you’re middle class, the government tax credits may be too small to make the insurance really affordable, or you may have to buy a less expensive high deductible policy in which you have to pay for your doctor visits out of your own pocket, unless you get really sick and need major surgery or an extended hospital stay. You and your doctor will still have to fight with your insurance company on whether it will cover procedures your doctor thinks are necessary. If you try to avoid buying your own insurance or think you can’t afford it, the government will penalize you.

To be fair, the Clinton/Obama/Edwards plans have some positive points. By banning “pre-existing conditions”, they would allow people to buy insurance who are simply uninsurable now. By requiring insurance companies to charge the same premiums regardless of age or health, they would make insurance more affordable to middle aged people. (Conversely, they would make insurance more expensive for younger people.) By providing tax credits, they would help lower middle class people afford at least lower priced, high deductible “catastrophic” policies. Most of the plans include a Medicare-like public alternative that individuals may purchase and whch competes with private insurance.

But overall, a universal insurance mandate is bad public policy compared to universal single payer health care. Some of the reasons:

........more.......

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2007/november/why_not_single_payer.php

and a total lack of experience of what for-profit insurance companies have done to us ordinary, non Congressional mortals.

How they expect people just scraping by to pay for a year of ridiculously high for profit health insurance premiums just to qualify for the tax rebate at year's end has escaped them completely. Are people supposed to do without housing or food? That's the choice they have.

The only hope we have is that these screwball non plans will be scrapped the minute they take their hands off those bibles at the swearing in ceremony, but it's a very faint hope. These people are elitists who have no clue what life is like here on earth.

I think you are giving them way too much credit. there is a lot of money tied up in the Health Care Scam/Industry.

by ignorance and intellectual laziness combined with class arrogance.

The fabulous corporate or government job that helps pay for the insurance come up with the money??

One third is taken out of your paycheck before you ever see it.

In some areas of the country, As much as fifty to sixty per cent of your income could be going to rent.

Gas to get you back and forth to work is $ 4 a gallon.


You are lucky if you are eating - where does the money come from??

MAYBE WE SHOULD STOP TAXING ANYONE WHO DOESN"T MAKE OVER $ 50 K a year. PERIOD...

I hate that people with money do all the writing because they never see the differences in these plans that matter to working people. I know Dodd's plan is a sliding scale, not tax cuts, and I think that's true of Obama's too. Also, many states already have insurance pools for people with pre-existing conditions, so there is some progress there. Finally, some states have put single payer on the ballot and had it go down in flames, so it isn't as if these plans are being proposed without that knowledge.