Campaign Desk

12:35 PM - March 3, 2010

Health Reform Lessons from Massachusetts, Part X

Unintended consequences for low-income workers

By Trudy Lieberman

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This is what blows my mind about this kind of health care "reform." How is requiring health insurance going to help people who are only currently uninsured because they can't afford it? It's not at all rational, and yet, here we are, considering it. All I can do is shake my head in dismay.

#1 Posted by laura k, CJR on Wed 3 Mar 2010 at 04:53 PM

In reading your article it appears that all in Massachusetts are taking a strain (residents, employers, state government) except the insurers and providers. They are the real winners in this scenario. It's business as usual for them.

Assuming that the insurers are responding to the costs generated by the providers, the question becomes, "What is being done to ascertain that healthcare costs are fair and reasonable?" If nothing is being planned at the state level to address this question (or take corrective action), then the folks in Massachusetts are headed for serious trouble. Since businesses are required to offer healthcare, these rising costs will eventually put most, if not all, Massachusetts' businesses at a competitive disadvantage with their out-of-state competitors. I just cancelled my homeowners policy with a Massachusetts company for a cheaper policy with more coverage offered by a company in Texas.

I expect we all now have a front row seat to watch what happens when any government implementing healthcare policy ignores associated costs arising from these policies. It's not going to be pretty.

#2 Posted by Dan Smith, CJR on Thu 4 Mar 2010 at 10:32 PM

I imagine that this "reform" charade will have to play itself out. The denouemont being the collapse of segments of business & the lower & middle classes. Then, perhaps, we can progress to the "robust public option", "medicare buy-in" options.

#3 Posted by Wadassah Weinreb, CJR on Fri 5 Mar 2010 at 12:56 AM

Laura, you hit it right on the nail.

You have to remember, first and foremost Obama and the Dems and GOPs are politicians- and sick people, like everybody else, only have one vote. And they often don't even get to use theirs, having more on their minds.

So, like all insurance plans, Obama's is a system designed for healthy people. Obama's "normal family" and their two votes. In order for his "normal family" to pay his promised 1.2% reduction in the increases, slightly smaller increased premium hikes, those who get sick must pay MORE, and how do plans that pride themselves on breaking even do that? They dump the sick any way they can. Public self sustaining plans are no exception. They have to as long as they keep the self sustaining insurance model. (which is based on a shameless lie, that Americans can afford healthcare, if there was only "more competition") So, sick people must trip, they must be dumped, and the way they will do it is with extra costs. Then, whatever happens after that is their fault and politicians cannot be blamed. This is what Austan Goolsbee was alluding to in his quote here. They only have a very small number of ways they can change who pays, but its never going to work because the target market simply doesn't have the money and the government is unwilling to chip it in either. Single payer is the only way out of this mess, and as we all know, that can NEVER happen, ever. (Not even in your wildest dreams.)

NEVER, did you get that, NEVER.

So, its a tug of war, when they give one group a much needed change, they must take from someone else. Hopefully, its late at night and the media will never point the change out. Then they wont notice it until the bill is passed,

If the bill is passed, don't worry. A LOT can happen between now and 2014, for example, the Dems might lose their majority. So, they are pretty optimistic that they will never get caught in these lies. And the real goal which is averting single payer and preserving the health care ISSUE for Democratic politicians without solving it, is achieved. Hooray.

There really is no hope, and never was from the day in the 90s, probably, that they and the other stakeholders decided that when the Bush era finally ended, and the public was screaming for affordable healthcare, only their handpicked politician would win and then, their debate was going to be about their agenda and their agenda only.

That politician was Barack Obama. he knows who signs his check.

Obama cannot deliver that vote getting smaller increase for his normal families if he lets those sick people get and keep coverage. That would be too expensive. Its absolutely crucial that sick people drop their coverage when they get sick, to save the plan money. The people who buy insurance must not see any path out of their enslavement.

Of course, it won't work for poor working people, but nobody expects it to. It just has to keep single payer off the agenda for at least five or six more years - by then the US will probably be in receivership and new social programs will be a moot point. We will have to give up everything to pay off our huge debts.

If, by some fluke, it survives till 2014 and becomes law, it's designed to crash soon afterward. It is a system that was designed from the beginning to implode under its own weight. Of course, the problems will all be blamed on Obama's "universal" health care. (This plan is anything but.)

Sorry no single payer this time. If you sick people want quality care, without the politics and these ridiculous games, consider moving somewhere else.

Good luck America!

#4 Posted by Joseph K, CJR on Sun 7 Mar 2010 at 05:42 PM