Letter to the Editor

[cos]

Last night, I submitted this as a letter to the editor to USA Today:

For decades, private for-profit insurance companies have been spreading fear about "government run health insurance". Despite the fact that people on Medicare - run by the government - are more satisfied with their insurance than people on private insurance, the private insurance companies have been telling us that national health care wouldn't work, because the government can't run a good insurance system, and we're all better off with private insurance. Obama's plan puts their claims to the test, and it's time to put up or shut up.

Obama proposes a compromise between a national single payer system, and the private insurance we have now: he wants to put a public health insurance option in the same market as private companies, to let people choose and see what works better.

Insurance companies' complaints about "unfair competition" are a smokescreen. They want to mislead us into a conversation about how to be fair to insurance companies, while they continue being unfair to the American people.

What the for-profit insurance companies are really saying is that they fear the government can run a better health insurance - that satisfies people more, and leaves us healthier, at a lower cost. They may be right. Congress owes it to us to create a public option so we can try it and find out. Stop worrying about the health of the insurance companies, and care for the health of the American people for a change.

Comments

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Right. Except that my mother (New Jersey Republican) made a good point. The context was that she felt she was going to be forced into using the government-provided health care option. I mentioned that she could still use her employer's insurance, and she said,

"But what if my employer says they're dropping the private health insurance and everyone will get a raise equivalent to (after taxes) the full yearly cost of the government's health insurance premiums?"

To which the answer is "well, if the health insurance companies want to stay in business, they'll have to be more competitive." Otherwise companies *will* stop spending lots more money for private health insurance, and those insurance companies *will* go out of business. So, yeah, health insurers give a damn.

That's also why it's completely fair for the government to offer an option, but only if it's paid for by premium monies -- because otherwise the government health insurance is subsidized (by the government through taxes) which private health carriers don't have the benefit of.

[cos]

I don't think that's actually a good point.

Several times in my employed life, I've been forced to switch health care plans by my employer. A few times it was due to mergers, and a couple of times it wasn't - it just so happened that for whatever financial reasons of their own, my employer at the time decided to eliminate one of the plans they subscribed to, or switch to a new provider. That's the current employer-provided health care system: Which plan you get is not under your control, it's under your employer's control, and they can make you change at their whim. Or, drop coverage (though that's less common, because employers who provide coverage want to keep doing so if they can afford to).

In principle, I don't see why it matters that one of the available plans is the new public option, while the others are the various existing plans employers already have available to them. It's no different than if some new private plan were to start up and become available.

That's also why it's completely fair for the government to offer an option, but only if it's paid for by premium monies - why the caveat? The public option Obama wants would, indeed, only be paid for by premiums, but I see no reason why it would be bad to have it paid for by taxes too, if the result were better health care for everyone.

... because otherwise the government health insurance is subsidized (by the government through taxes) which private health carriers don't have the benefit of. ... and I see no problem with that at all. That, again, is worrying about the health of insurance companies rather than the health of people. From our point of view, who cares what the insurance companies have the benefit of? We only care that good insurance is available for us, and that it doesn't cost too much. Are you saying that it is somehow inherently true that giving a public insurance plan an advantage over for-profit plans makes good health insurance for people less available? I don't get that.

[awfief.livejournal.com]

see no reason why it would be bad to have it paid for by taxes too, if the result were better health care for everyone.

I agree with this statement. The point of my comment was to try to see things from the point of view of the people who are saying "it's unfair", and try to understand why they're saying that (beyond the motivation of setting a smokescreen).

I also agree that it's a smokescreen.