Bush’s Plan To Destroy Your Healthcare

For 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?


posted by greg on January 31, 2005 @ 4:55 pm

12 comments

  1. Health Insurance - through the Looking Glass

    Into the Conservative mind. If Socialized medicine is bad, making employees pay for their own health care must be good.
    You can count on hearing about this in the SOTU, framed as a tax credit to provide health insurance to the working poor. Get out …

    Trackback by WindyCityLefty — January 31, 2005 @ 6:34 pm

  2. This is slightly nit-picky, and may actually strengthen your argument, but deductibles aren’t monthly fees. They are what you have to pay up front before the insurance kicks in if you have catastrophic health issues. For example, if you have a $1000 deductible, and you have a $1500 hospital bill, you pay $1000, and the insurance only pays $500.

    If that’s what you meant when you said fees, this comment has been a bit of a waste, but the way you word it, you seem to imply monthly fees.

    Comment by randomliberal — January 31, 2005 @ 7:34 pm

  3. And my family wonders why I’m considering moving to Australia to live with my boyfriend. It sure is far away, and sure, it’s not a perfect utopia, but with the way things are going here, it’s looking better and better every day. (Wow, government-funded healthcare, nice weather, inexpensive education and reasonably-priced housing? You don’t say!)

    Comment by wildsoda — January 31, 2005 @ 8:24 pm

  4. Okay, let me get this straight. . .just what is the purpose of this proposal? This plan will bring down the cost of health care, right? This plan will eliminate wasteful medical lawsuits against hard working doctors?

    I’m sure insurance companies will eagerly accept all persons regardless of medical risk into their plans! The one point about company plans is that ALL EMPLOYEES are accepted into the plan regrdless of pre-existing conditions. Wanna bet that will change, when individuals apply for coverage with insurance companies?

    Could it be that this plan will allow the insurance companies to determine who they will allow to enroll and thereby allowing them to plow more money into their savings accounts?

    In the “unlikely event” of a major and on-going medical problem, and you’ve depleted your personal savings, sold all you own including your home, that the a county or state body will provide medical care.

    What a great country!!

    Comment by CrazyinAZ — January 31, 2005 @ 8:44 pm

  5. Look over there! Social Security!

    Because what we really need is people to be more “careful” in their healthcare use, right? Too many people are going to the doctors when they only think they may be sick, rather than waiting for the end stage cancer or their diabetes to go out of con…

    Trackback by Get Your Blog Up — January 31, 2005 @ 9:54 pm

  6. My doctor visits cost 12 bucks and any hospital stays are completely free. Of course, I live in Norway so…

    Comment by platosearwax — February 1, 2005 @ 4:52 am

  7. You are probably looking at $400-500 a month for a single person, twice that for a family. As noted before the “high deductible” is payable by the policy holder. Then the insurance company would pay 70-90% of the remainder. So it is entirely conceivable that the insurance company would end up paying about $400 for a $1500 bill. And it is also correct that many people would stop getting preventative health care which usually costs no less that $100 a visit, not counting blood tests, mamograms, etc. And let’s hope you don’t have children who need vaccinations or throat cultures. Then there are the drugs. A 7 day course of the latest generation of antibiotics is $100, antihypertensives, $1 a day. Depressed yet, sorry you can’t afford Zoloft anymore. It is very likely a family of four would have to spend several thousand dollars on routine medical care and minor illnesses and injuries each year in addition to the monthly insurance payment. It’s a sweet deal for the insurance companies and they know it. Bush opponents need to be specific about the numbers on health care costs and social security. The bullshit phrase “ownership society” doesn’t sound so swell when it means you own most of your own health care costs.

    Comment by Becky — February 1, 2005 @ 6:50 am

  8. Umm, ouch…That would be murder for me and my family as we all have mental conditions (depression, mostly) that require prescriptions and psychologists. It’s bad enough that my primary counselor is not so much covered by my current insurance…to lose drug coverage would be disasterous.

    Comment by randomliberal — February 1, 2005 @ 12:22 pm

  9. Am I missing something here? Seems like this will be a big hit to the insurance companies’ wallets.
    Sure, they’ll pay out less on claims, but a lot of people won’t be able to afford any kind of insurance, especially if they have to pay the full premium cost.
    And the insurance companies are going to have to sell one policy at a time instead of group coverage - what a load of overhead!
    Why would the insurance industry go along with this? They’ve got big bucks and fat-cat lobbyists, too.

    Comment by Captain Nemo — February 1, 2005 @ 3:39 pm

  10. Well, since people will no longer have the weight of their employers behind them, insurance companies will be able to pick and choose who they feel like covering. When they don’t have to worry about providing health care to people prone to health problems, there’s no telling how much cash they’d be able to hold on to.

    Comment by greg — February 1, 2005 @ 3:56 pm

  11. The “ownership society” only works for people with the means to own! What is clear to me is that this is a plan to address employers’ increasing financial burden to provide health insurance to workers, something viewed as part of their overall compensation. By eliminating this burden altogether, employers will save millions and employees will suffer an immediately noticeable cut in pay. But who gives a damn? People who can afford health insurance will still have it, and fuck the rest of us. Too bad so many conservatives have such a problem admitting that they’re just barely hanging on, and that Bush’s policies are destroying their way of life.

    Comment by fullnelson — February 2, 2005 @ 9:13 am

  12. this sounds to me an awful lot like socioeconomic eugenics…

    Comment by r.cync — February 3, 2005 @ 8:53 am

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