Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Insurance Fear vs. Other Fears, Pt.7 –- No Single-payer

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Note that this is still not a single-payer plan. The still large private health insurance market will need to respond to this threat. They will, presumably, respond in kind, but in the opposite direction. They will most-likely try to shift costs back to the HCA by only providing health insurance to the young and healthy at advantageous prices, but pressure the sicker and older individuals into the government options. If this should happen, the risk pool in the HCA will grow expensive. The public health insurance premiums will have to rise inordinately. Without cutting care, cost savings will be lost in spite of the government’s efforts. So, from the political standpoint, a robust version of the Hacker plan would be a huge stretch. Since the Democrats couldn’t even get the required 60 Senate votes for allowing Medicare Part D to bargain down drug prices, getting permission to set them centrally is hardly even thinkable. Even if the Democratic Party was to embrace part of Hacker’s health insurance version and also achieve several Senate seats, it would be shaky, at best to build in government price controls.

Notwithstanding the differences between Hillary’s and Barack’s health insurance/care proposals concerning who’s to be covered, both are based on a health insurance/care structure that is close to Hacker's. For example, both include his new, "Medicare-like" group market. However, it is noted that neither has stepped up to explicitly use the group market to set cost controls. Even though the great concern for cost control is constantly reverberated by everyone in the picture, Democrats, Republicans, industry and the general American population at large, no one dares to commit politically, a viable method. It’s like avoiding the spot of that one bad tooth with the open cavity, when eating candy.

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