Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Coverage Proposal – Who will be covered and how well? Focus on crisis.

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Although Mr. McCain advocates the most radical change, the least amount of relief from the health insurance/care crisis is expected from it. For the vast majority, it is projected that Americans would be paying more and getting less. The opposite is true for the health insurance industry (consolidating the wealth). By losing employer-based health insurance coverage, employees could now be paying the 75% to 81% more for their premiums than they had been paying when their employers picked up the bulk. Moreover, most of them will be risk-analyzed individually and underwritten (meaning their health insurance rates will rise because of age or health).

Obviously, the only reason any insurance to exist is to protect consumers from risk. That’s the only reason for paying them a dime. With McCain’s plan, the health insurance industry will provide much less risk protection because they’ll get to hedge bets on an individual basis (a little like singling out players in a poker game). Many of the 170 million Americans who steadfastly depend on the stability of employee-based shared-risk plans will find themselves on the out. No longer able to afford adequate health insurance. Remember, McCain’s key here is to consolidate the wealth. This would happen.

The McCain camp touts an optimistic prediction that: “Up to 30 million of the uninsured might take out policies using their tax credits.” But the ‘Times’ article points out that the new individual-risk policies McCain would provide would probably be meager — with “high deductibles, large co-payments and limited benefits — and unlikely to provide much help in a crisis.” Inadequate health insurance would rule the day. So, the prediction is that only 2 million of the projected 67 million Americans projected to have no health insurance by 2018 will be helped.

In contrast, Mr. Obama’s health insurance plan is, at least, projected to cover 35 million of these 67 million Americans without health insurance.

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