Health Reform Without a Public Plan: The German Model

[biopowertoday]

I posted this on another thread, but it is very informative and deserves its own thread.

Deep and strict insurance regulation is the key for its success


http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/health-ref... /



April 17, 2009, 7:02 am
Health Reform Without a Public Plan: The German Model
By Uwe E. Reinhardt



............In Europe, as in Canada, that social ethic is based on the principle of social solidarity. It means that health care should be financed by individuals on the basis of their ability to pay, but should be available to all who need it on roughly equal terms. The regulations imposed on health care in these countries are rooted in this overarching principle.

First, these countries all mandate the individual to be insured for a basic package of health care benefits.

Many Americans oppose such a mandate as an infringement of their personal rights, all the while believing that they have a perfect right to highly expensive, critically needed health care, even when they cannot pay for it. This immature, asocial mentality is rare in the rest of the world. An insurance sector that must insure all comers at premiums that are not contingent on the insured’s health status — a feature President Obama has promised — cannot function for long if people can go without insurance when they are healthy, but are entitled to premiums unrelated to their health status when they fall ill. ....................

[Hello_Kitty]

1. Mandates would be a disaster in the U.S., both politically and in practice

It will be nothing but corporate welfare to our greedy parasitic insurance industry. And the people who will be screwed the most will be the young working class people. When you are making $7 an hour as a cashier at Target, even a $100 a month premium will break you. Yet these are the very people who the mandate pushers scapegoat. A mandate may work in a place like Germany because they strictly regulate insurance AND require that people be paid a decent wage.

[biopowertoday]

2. did you have

a chance to read the whole article? It explains how they get around the low income and unemployed.

the key is regulation and if we had congress and a PResident to advocated for this we could try it. but both are weak and are in bed with the industry.

[Hello_Kitty]

3. I don't think it explains what I'm talking about.

It says that children, non-working spouses, and the unemployed are covered. Perhaps I should have been more specific with my example of a Target employee. I mean a single, childless person who makes $7 an hour. Her counterpart who has kids already qualifies for Medicaid in most states but she doesn't qualify for anything because she makes "too much" and doesn't have a dependent. This type of person is the majority of the people that mandate fans deride as the deadbeats who are driving up everyone's costs. But in reality she's just being rational. If you're young, healthy, and poor it makes a hell of a lot more sense to take your chances without insurance than it does to purchase the cheapest policy you can find, which is usually some bullshit catastrophic coverage with hefty out-of-pocket costs. And even if reforms to the insurance industry are implemented such that the coverage is better and premiums are lower, will they be low enough for young childless people (who will probably get little to no subsidies in this family-oriented society) to be able to afford them? Who will decide what they can afford?