Face it folks, committee work isn’t always pretty. The products of committees reflect input of enough folks to move a proposal forward, and one can’t really know the end result until the finished product is voted out.
So what we’re reading today is not necessarily what we will be reading in the end.
That said ….
Here’s a link to H3200, the only health ‘reform’ proposal in the public domain.
And there is good and bad in it.
One of my complaints regarding forced insurance coverage, even … nay … especially where government subsidies will come into play, is simple: more of our collectively owned tax dollars will be siphoned off to big corporate investor America and the uber-wealthy making a financial killing off these investments (which we have to bail out from time to time … witness the latest multi-trillion dollar deal that saved the investor class, including today’s insurance companies).
Have no fear, deep concern this will happen again.
17 SEC. 116. ENSURING VALUE AND LOWER PREMIUMS.
18 (a) IN GENERAL.-A qualified health benefits plan
19 shall meet a medical loss ratio as defined by the Commis-
20 sioner. For any plan year in which the qualified health
21 benefits plan does not meet such medical loss ratio, QHBP
22 offering entity shall provide in a manner specified by the
23 Commissioner for rebates to enrollees of payment suffi-
24 cient to meet such loss ratio.
This sounds really great. If a given insurance company is making too much profit, they have to return such excess to the subscribers in the form of rebates.
But who gets to define what is excessive?
1 (b) BUILDING ON INTERIM RULES.-In imple-
2 menting subsection (a), the Commissioner shall build on
3 the definition and methodology developed by the Secretary
4 of Health and Human Services under the amendments
5 made by section 161 for determining how to calculate the
6 medical loss ratio. Such methodology shall be set at the
7 highest level medical loss ratio possible that is designed
8 to ensure adequate participation by QHBP offering enti-
9 ties, competition in the health insurance market in and
10 out of the Health Insurance Exchange, and value for con-
11 sumers so that their premiums are used for services.
As it turns out the government will be setting the excessive profit threshold. When was the last time you and I had a seat at the table for this kind of decision making?
The sausage currently being mashed together doesn’t include Palin’s death panels, lost coverage or killing off old people as the radical right wing Republican Party would have us believe. But it does have things of concern.
The insurance companies are getting their bread buttered on both sides: on one side are those who want to kill any attempt at reasonable changes in how we pay for medical care; and on the other side, just in case the first side lands face down, is an almost guarantee they (the insurance companies) will not suffer their huge profits and multi-million/billion dollar pay packages.
Anybody who believes this proposal provides a path to a single payer system isn’t paying attention.