Friday, July 03, 2009

It's Time



It is time... time for a public option national healthcare plan. Frankly, I don't care whether or not the option of private insurance continues but there must be a public option now.

1 comment:

Dennis E. McFadden said...

Agreed.

However, don't be naive about how a public option would play out. The President is disingenuous when he says that he is not trying to eliminate private insurance, and that he just wants choice. He doesn't need to eliminate it, people like me will! If I'm given a choice between paying between 1/2 and 1 million dollars annually for my employee medical insurance (we pay 100% of the coverage for all full-time employees) and contributing 8% of payroll to a fund and let the feds cover everyone, I'll take the federal option . . . it's a lot cheaper!!! Employers will flock to the public option for the simple reason that it saves money. You'd have to be irresponsible (to your shareholders, to your owners, or to your board,stakeholders, and donors [depending on whether you are for profit or a charity] to do otherwise).

Politically, my favorite option would be to universalize medicare and let private insurance cover the gap between those who want basic HMO type care and those looking for more coverage and more options (and willing to pay for it).

My favorite personal option (having just waited 1 month for my HMO to get around to doing cardiology tests after my primary doc suspected a heart attack) would be a Kaiser type system where everything is all in one shop (no delays in seeing necessary specialists).