Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Journal on McCain’s Health Plan, Pt.4 – Efficiency trimming good, but not enough.

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The obvious problem with McCain’s plan is that the health insurance/care price index is many times higher than the CPI. So in just a short time, the cost of health insurance/care would be out of reach again. Only if health insurance/care costs could be radically restrained could this plan be meaningful and effective.

Runaway costs have always been the main culprit, which will always be the main drive of capitalist industries. So, efficiencies alone would have limited effect. Without classifying health insurance/care charges differently than the general consumer market, the medical charges will continue to drive costs to the highest point of profit at the expense of the millions who can’t afford health insurance/care for themselves. They will continue to fall back on the very costly Emergency Room ‘safety-net’ for lack of anything better. Meanwhile, the health insurance/care prices left unchecked will continue to follow the ‘Reaganized, Milton Friedman philosophy: “The only responsibility of Corporations is only to maximize shareholder value, period.”

Without the ‘basic right of health insurance/care’ restraint, any savings in efficiencies would quickly be consumed by the free market. The shareholders will benefit, but the uninsured will remain in the swamp. Mr. Holtz-Eakin was requested by the experts to elaborate a little further on the tax credit ‘indexing method’ but, alas, he did not respond.

The findings of this expert panel, published in Health Affairs, interestingly, were very comparable to the findings of a completely independent health insurance study back in July. A preliminary study by the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution predicted a one-million-people early gain, followed by an, almost, 5 million people loss within 4 years. The number of uninsured would then creep upward, as it has since the advent of the Bush administration.

Continued…