By Dave Anderson:
As Steve Benen notes liberals think competition in the health insurance market between players large enough to have some market power would bring about a significant consumer surplus. At least one of those players would be a public option. Republicans this week think competition is bad.
In this sense, I see this as a terrific opportunity. As Bachmann sees it, a public plan would invariably fail. By her reasoning, it's inevitable -- if Americans are given a choice, they'd reject Medicare-like public coverage and go with the innovative, affordable, high-quality insurance offered by private companies.
So, here's what I propose: let's give it a shot and see who wins. If Bachmann believes what she said, she can shut liberals up very easily -- give American consumers a choice. If she's right, and "government can't compete with private industry," Americans will choose private coverage. If I'm right, Americans will prefer a public plan. If she's right, the public option would be rejected and wither away. If I'm right, we'd have a vibrant marketplace in which competition lowers costs for everyone.
Reform advocates would welcome that bet. If conservatives believe the private sector is necessarily superior to the public sector, they should gladly take the wager and prove their point.
I just want to speak about some of my personal experience in researching health insurance for my daughter. After I got laid off, I received my COBRA eligibility letter. My COBRA plan is from one of the two major insurers in the Pittsburgh market, and it has a good network. It is a high deductible plan where my family pays the first $XXXX in expenses with no co-insurance, and then once XXXX+1 is met, the insurance company pays everything, with no co-pays or further deductibles. The marginal cost to add my daughter to the plan is significant, slightly less than one week's worth of unemployment insurance.
Thankfully, the ARRA (stimulus) has a 65% premium subsidy in it for COBRA coverage, so the insurance is affordable. However, when the benefit year ends and the next year's worth of deductibles are introduced, we will get kicked in the gut when I take my daughter in for her one year well-baby check-up and vaccinations as the deductible will require me to pay for the entire visit out of pocket.
On the other hand, Pennsylvania CHIP is pretty damn good insurance. All kids in Pennsylvania are eligible for CHIP. There are three price levels, free, reduced and full price. Full price CHIP is required by law to cover the full cost of covering a kid. Right now the full cost of covering my daughter is roughly 60% of the full, unsubsidized price of covering her under COBRA. And the insurance is better from the consumer point of view, as her first year well-baby check-up and vaccinations would have a total out of pocket expense of under fifty bucks (not including the Tylenol and lolly-pop she'll get from me for having been such a good girl when she was getting her shots.)
The weak public option analogue that is CHIP is seriously kicking the living shit out of the cheap private group insurance that I have to access via COBRA. I just have to figure out if we can shift my daughter to CHIP for January.
COBRA is a bitch. I know because when I took early retirement seven years ago I saw how tough it was to pay MORE for insurance when your income goes DOWN. I scrambled to get a job with health insurance.
ReplyDeleteMore recently I went through the same exercise, planning to coast into Medicare before the 18 months was up, but this time I was able to receive a partial tax credit (very much like your ARRA assistance) because my pension is through PBGC (my company went broke and PBGC had to take over).
Georgia's SCHIP is called Peachcare. One of my grandchildren was covered when his parents started a new business because they could not afford any other insurance. Excellent arrangement, by the way.
I have an idea that one of the unexpected positive results of health care reform could be a revitalization of the whole labor market as employees find out they are no longer handcuffed to their jobs by their health care plans.
Job lock by company insurance plans is totally counterproductive and is a ball and chain on American economy. When employers wake up to the reality that employees are no longer held captive by that benefit bosses might start treating subordinates better.