Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Critical Choices:  McCain vs. Obama, Pt.4 –- Conservative vs. liberal view.

Previous…

Conservatives (those who are conservative with their sharing) believe that the lack of consumer control found with employer-based health insurance plans takes away cost control. The employer issuing the health insurance plan will pay whatever the medical providers charge and the employee covered by that health insurance doesn’t care either. Interesting theory, do employers and employees care about being “saddled” with, by far, the most expensive health care system in the developed world? Or is the employer/employee relationship such that they can’t decide together? Do the conservatives really want to build automobiles as cheaply as Canada does, while trashing the method that enables Canada to do so.

It seems that each side believes that the other side’s plan is unsustainable. The conservatives are concerned that Obama’s approach will allow government to oversee guaranteed access to affordable health insurance by providing subsidies for everyone to get health insurance. The concern centers around the Massachusetts model, which has many similarities to Obama’s. Until last week there was widespread criticism that the Massachusetts health insurance model was incomplete and unsustainable. Survey results last week revealed much better success than anticipated in almost all area’s. Because of the unanticipated reception in numbers of new enrollees, the initial budget came up short. This was not a shock to the administrators, however, as they quickly implemented a means to sustain this by raising the tobacco tax. Massachusetts still has some strides to accomplish but they, so far, have been able to keep on top of things.

Continued…