Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Assessing Obama’s Divergence From McCain, Pt.1 – Finding the best benefit/cost balance.

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The Brookings Institution’s assessment, along with other well-respected research organizations also coincide concerning Mr. Obama’s health insurance/care package. They concur that Mr. Obama’s plan, unmodified, would cover as many as 18 million by the year 2009. By the year 2018, his plan would have covered 34 million of the 45.7 million Americans who now have no health insurance. So even though he will have covered about 74% of those currently without health insurance, this will still fall short of universal health insurance, with 26% remaining uninsured.

Again, we return to vagueness issues. Sometimes these are necessary because a hard blueprint is still in the making. But they are also frustrating to the public. One of these vague issues, critics say, concerns funding. One of the less-defined aspects tends to be the amount of employer-mandated contributions for those employers who decide not to offer health insurance to their employees. The trick is to find the best balance point. If the employer tax assessment is too low, employers will jump on it and drop health insurance, thereby placing too great a burden on the government to insure those people. If it’s too high, business will be hurt, thereby worsening our economy.

Critics believe that 6% of employee wage is too little. Even though not heavily publicized, Mr. Obama draws heavily from evolving results of the Massachusetts universal health insurance model. Massachusetts is now testing the effect of 7% of employee wages. Only now, just moving into it’s third year, the model project has achieved strikingly good performance reviews. One challenge that still must be resolved, however, is funding.

Continued…
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