Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Ironic Plight of the Uninsured, Pt.1 -- McCain's "best plan"

Director of Colorado for Health Care (part of Americans for Health Care), Kjersten Forseth has written a fine article for the Rocky Mountain News focusing on one of the most serious issues currently rolled into the muddled mess of presumptive rhetoric. In it, Kjersten points out the irony of debuting “the best plan” during our nation’s National Uninsured Week. This new “best plan” introduced by John McCain seems to not even address the uninsured and doesn’t even offer a viable method to reduce health insurance costs enough to substantially reduce the colossal number (47 million) of currently without health insurance. Further, Mr. Forseth submits that McCain’s plan could cause some who currently do have health insurance to lose it.

As is probably well known, currently most Americans are enrolled in employee health insurance plans. As Mr. McCain is proposing to eliminate the tax incentive from the respective providing employers, it is inevitable that many of those will be prompted to drop plan coverage altogether. This cause and effect will leave a large number of these respective hapless employees to fend for themselves in the private health insurance market (based mostly on the supply and demand curve – the more desperate you become, the more it’s gonna cost you.). This problem is already accelerating to becoming rampant. Mr. Forseth warns that cornering those employers already in the balance with the additional burden will only serve to exacerbate the problem. Kjersten contrasts the loss exacted on the hapless ones who must give up employee health insurance and seek individual insurance. He challenges the rest of us to do the same.

Continued…