Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Insurance vs. Socialized Healthcare, Pt4 -- What Difference?

Previous...

This is the continuation covering Kevin Freking’s clarification of this controversial issue…

The main difference between Clinton’s and Obama’s health insurance plan is the requirement of who must get health insurance. Clinton’s plan would require everyone to receive health insurance. Obama would only require children to have coverage. These methods would retain the current split system. For Clinton, all of the elderly, the poor, the disabled and many veterans would primarily receive government-provided care. Obama’s plan is similar, except that only some of the poor and some of the disabled will receive care. Most of the others would either continue to get employer-provided coverage, get private coverage or be covered through a Medicare-like option.

As Karen Davis, president of the health research firm called the Commonwealth Fund puts it: "Their approach is not taking any other country's system. It's building on what we have in the U.S." Existing health insurance will still be prevalent. The candidates believe that the Medicare-like option they propose will also offer additional competition that would benefit consumers. A professor at Harvard Business School, Regina E. Herzlinger suggests that, if the plan is subsidized too generously, the private companies may not be able to compete. If this would happen, then there is the potential of this turning into the "backdoor” to a single-payer system. As Mr. Freking explains “Still, the mix of private and public coverage bears little resemblance to Canada or Great Britain, two nations that Americans might think of when it comes to universal health insurance.”

To be continued…