Bush’s Plan To Destroy Your Healthcare
Monday, January 31st, 2005For those of you lucky enough to have employer-provided health insurance, take note. The Bush Administration wants to take it away :
Emboldened by their success at the polls, the Bush administration and Republican leaders in Congress believe they have a new opportunity to move the nation away from the system of employer-provided health insurance that has covered most working Americans for the last half-century.In its place, they want to erect a system in which workers ? instead of looking to employers for health insurance ? would take personal responsibility for protecting themselves and their families: They would buy high-deductible “catastrophic” insurance policies to cover major medical needs, then pay routine costs with money set aside in tax-sheltered health savings accounts.
Elements of that approach have been on the conservative agenda for years, but what has suddenly put it on the fast track is GOP confidence that the political balance of power has changed.
[. . .]
Supporters of the new approach, who see it as part of Bush’s “ownership society,” say workers and their families would become more careful users of healthcare if they had to pay the bills. Also, they say, the lower premiums on high-deductible plans would make coverage affordable for the uninsured and for small businesses.
Jeez, Republicans sure do have a boner for savings accounts huh? Since I already blogged about this a few months ago, here’s why this “personal account” stuff is bad, bad news :
I wonder if Bush has ever had to lay all his bills out on the kitchen table and figure out which ones he can pay immediately and which ones can wait until the next paycheck? Or if he’s ever lived in an overcrowded apartment with hand-me-down furniture, eating the same thing six days a week because it’s cheaper? Or if he’s ever had to settle for a job slightly less shitty than the one he had in high school because there weren’t any jobs in the field he majored in? Of if he’s gone through the process of figuring out which generic brand products at the grocery store are as good as the name brands and which ones aren’t?As most of you know, I’m not just describing poverty here. This is normal life for many Americans. Some live paycheck to paycheck, while others are able to pinch enough pennies to save a few bucks. Either way, most people don’t have thousands of dollars to spare.
Practically speaking, savings accounts for retirement and heath care a huge mistake, but for entirely separate reasons. With the latter, the rub is that health care is expensive. Let’s say you have an medical emergency with costs in the $20-30K range. How long would it take you to save that much? A few years? Even with the vague incentives, we’re still looking at a plan that’s the equivalent of asking every American to buy a new car that he/she may never drive.
Since this new article provides a little more detail, lemme point out some additional problems I have with this plan :
Pay close attention to the language in the article. The plan is to replace employer-provided insurance with “high-deductible” insurance policies. Deductible is just another word for “fees” and in this case, the first step in the plan to screw up your healthcare coverage is to charge you high fees for insurance. Keep in mind that that’s just the first part. We haven’t even gotten to the savings account yet.
While the expensive insurance that you’d be obligated to buy will only cover “major medical needs”, everything else is paid for out of your hypothetical savings account. I’ve already pointed out the problem with creating an account, but what happens if you actually have one? Well, unlike insurance, your savings account can run out of money pretty damn fast. What happens if you’ve got a chronic illness that requires frequent doctor’s visits? Or you get sick a week or two after starting your account. Tough shit, poor boy. That’s what you get for not having a healthy body.
And finally, what’s the point of messing with people’s insurance? In the words of the article, Bush and Co. think “workers and their families would become more careful users of healthcare if they had to pay the bills”. The implication here is that “more careful” means making less visits to the doctor. Having routine medical expenses not covered by the “catastrophic” insurance policies all but guarantees it. Of course, the problem here is that Americans don’t go to the doctor enough already. When you consider the fact thousands of Americans die each year of diseases that could have been caught through early detection, is it really a good idea to give people a financial motive for skipping mammograms, prostate exams, routine physicals, etc??
So, let’s sum up the GOP plan for medical overhaul that will be part of this “ownership society”. First, they want to encourage employers to dump you from your existing insurance plan (and if you read the rest of the article, if doesn’t sound like they need much convincing). Second, they want to force you into an expensive insurance plan that will only cover “catastrophic” medical procedures. Third, on top of the higher cost of your insurance policy, they want you start saving up any extra cash that you probably don’t have lying around. Finally, the whole point here is to ease the financial burden on your employer, make you pay more for less coverage, and encourage you to seek medical help as rarely as possible.
UPDATE : As randomliberal helpfully pointed out in the comments, I was a little fuzzy in my estimation of what was meant by “high-deductible”. (I really need to get into the habit of reading this stuff before I hit “Publish”.) To be precise, the deductibles that are paid up front for healthcare are what will be higher. The actual fees for the insurance, however, will come entirely out of your pocket rather than your employers’. In the spirit of the “self-correcting” blogosphere, my earlier statement should read “higher-deductibles and much, much higher fees.” Doesn’t that make you feel better?


