McCain health plan calls for shopping around

Source: Anchorage Daily News

John McCain's health plan would bring about a dramatic shift in how millions of people get health insurance coverage. He would let people shop around for plans offered by insurers in other states. New Yorkers could look to Alabama, for example, or any other state when shopping for coverage.

"Why not? Don't we go across state lines when we purchase other things in America?" McCain asks.

The idea sounds simple, but has huge implications.

Consider this:

Cervical cancer screenings, contraceptives and diabetic supplies are just some of the benefits that health insurers in New York must cover when serving customers there. New York also requires insurers to accept people regardless of pre-existing health conditions and without charging them higher premiums.

The state has some of the best consumer protections around, but those protections come at a price. Few insurers offer coverage in New York's individual health insurance market. The ones that do have pricey monthly premiums.

Now shift to Alabama, identified as having among the fewest consumer protections of any state.........

Read more: http://www.adn.com/uspolitics/story/566296.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvyN3EHrFbM">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvyN3EHrFbM

The very idea of "insurance" involves having "pooled risk." The larger the pool the better.

Peeling off those who are unlikely to make a claim just breaks the system, making it meaningless. McCain's idea is just another facet of the failed "reganomics" charade in that it would privatize the profit (insurance companies offering affordable coverage only those unlikely to ever make a claim) and socializes the cost (dump anyone who might make a claim onto an exorbitantly-priced plan.)

With national single-payer, the entire nation becomes the risk pool. This is the only model that makes any sense, both logically and financially.

You'll find most if not all health insurers moving to the state with the least consumer protections, much like the way so many corporations are from Delaware because they have the fewest regulations regardng corporations.

The office exists to license insurance companies to do business in that particular state for that particular commissioner's constituents. How will this office wield any leverage to punish an insurer if an insurance company in New York defrauds customers in Alabama?

...the Bush administration has been promoting a variation of what McCain espouses for some time. A lot of the emphasis is placed not just on shopping for insurance but on shopping for procedures -- as though getting yourself the cheapest obstetrician or cardiologist is the objective.

Another angle the Bush administration has taken is to depict some of the better insurance plans as too generous (i.e., not unlike McCain's comments about gold-plated Cadillac health insurance).

All in all, it's an approach that assumes the market makes the best choices -- Good luck passing that off as a sane viewpoint these days! -- and that health care is a privilege, not a right. So much for the pro-life stance, eh?

And it isn't just McCain. Palin has been making noises for some time about market-driven care and about people taking responsibility for their own health. It's more of the usual nonsense that if you are just hard-hearted enough with people, they'll shape up, and never mind about all the variables of life (like six-figure medical bills when someone falls ill or gives birth to a premature baby).

http://www.ontheissues.org/2008/Sarah_Palin_Health_Care.htm

Our choices often lead to heart disease, diabetes, underage drinking, drugs, violence, and abuse. Soaring health and public safety costs are sometimes unfairly passed on to others. But more importantly, by ignoring or accepting selfish choices that cause the abuse, children, families and entire communities are destroyed. Government cannot cure all ills. And don't assume more laws foisted on Alaskans are the only answer--most "bad activity" is already illegal...I'm counting on families, communities and faith-based groups to step up, together, to help passionately here, too.

You chose to get pregnant even though you're over 40 and you know the risks to the mother and baby are significantly higher. Who was paying for your healthcare? Now, I'm making a guess now and may get smacked down for not doing my research, but since you were governor of Alaska at the time I am betting the state, that is the government, that is the taxpayers, picked up the tab for it all.

You CHOSE to continue the pregnancy, knowing you were caring a down syndrome baby. While I applaud your consistency in the "Pro-Life" principles you espouse, who is picking up the tab for it? Many DS children have medical problems.

Actually, a part of me agrees with this statement. As humans, we make poor choices - we eat too many of the wrong foods and don't exercise enough. That makes us a "sick" nation. I agree also that government cannot cure all ills, but this is a large societal problem requiring a large societal solution. She's oversimplifying the issue and only looking at the surface.

States will be presured by competition to ratchet down their regulations just to keep insurance companies from moving.

Winners: the few
Losers: the many

It's not something everyone is likely to do (or be able to do).

Why are they trying to make it needlessly complicated? Are they trying to kill it before it's even in place?

coverage for certain things that are now required by individual states.

Think about it. You want to be covered for such and such, and you're willing to pay for it. But it is practically unavailable.

It should be up to the states. If NY's requirements make ins. too expensive, New Yorkers need to change that legislation.

-An insurance company now operating in Alabama or Idaho, would not sell policies to people in NY that are based upon what the company reimburses in Alabama. (Okay, maybe they would, if they planned to pay only 1 out of every 10 claims!)

-Private Insurance companies enter into rate negotiations with hospitals. Every insurance company in the US is going to contract with every hospital in the US? Or is McCain planning to add a provision which says health providers must simply take whatever is offered to them?

-People complain all of the time about hospital bureaucracies. Under this proposal, billing/collections would turn into an even greater nightmare.

-State insurance agencies are the only recourse that most people have when an insurer does wrong by them. Somehow, I kind of doubt that the Idaho Dept of Insurance will work up much of a sweat over complaints originating in Florida.

Ridiculous.