Months and Millions to Keep the Status Quo

As of this morning, it looks like some sort of health care reform bill will come out of the senate today. It seems the Dems got their 60 votes. Of course, I have not read this final bill, nor have I heard a thorough analysis of it yet. I suspect what it will be is, to borrow a line from Matt Welch at Reason.org, a "plan doubles down on most everything that's bad with the current system."

I have stated repeatedly, and will do so again: Significant health care reform would decouple health benefits from employment. Doing so would have several immediate effects. It would reveal the true cost of health care because employers would, after ending coverage, need to provide that same offset to employees as wages, and those wages would be whisked away as the employee wrote the check for health care. It would also free up potential entrepreneurs to strike out on their own without being tied to a corporation for the benefits package.

That assumes that health care is also affordable, and that 30 percent of premiums weren't skimmed right off the top by the likes of Cigna or Blue Cross to cover administrative salaries and executive compensation (like the $25.8 million that Cigna CEO H. Edward Hanway waltzed away with in 2007). With a for-profit model for health care insurance, there is little chance of meaningful reform. A government-offered single-payer public option (essentially a buying pool with no profit being made for those of you who think this is some sort of socialism) would have been the only dent in the corporate monopoly of health care. But we don't get that now.

Here's what I think we'll get when the dust settles: A requirement to buy health insurance from a for-profit provider at whatever rate they want to charge us (with a minor penalty if we decline to purchase it), and while the health care corporation will not be allowed to decline coverage for pre-existing conditions, they will be free to charge exorbitant rates for things like age, existing conditions, or potential conditions including pregnancy.

The end result for a self-employed guy like me? Expensive, mandatory payment for decent coverage no different - or worse - than I have now. Piss on the obstructionist Republicans and spineless Democrats. There will be little or no chance to fix this later with add-on bills because the Dems are going to lose many seats in the mid-term elections. Congratulations elected representatives. You spent months and millions to keep the status quo. Consider me unimpressed.