Public option for healthcare

[Bond]

Originally Posted by TheGame

Initially it will not be enough to cover the costs, you're right. Tax dollars will give birth to this program.

So, if one already possesses private health insurance, and wants nothing to do with a public option, is it moral to require that that person pay for the public option through mandated taxation?

If it becomes the standard type of healthcare for the country and private insurance is pushed into being something for the wealthy.. then it will eventually get to the point where it pays for itself.

How would it pay for itself if the program simply had more citizens who wish to opt-in?

Though it will pay for itself without pushing for making a profit, and without dealing with as much upper management as private health insurance has. Which will keep the costs at a lower then average rate (in theory).

Statistically speaking, workers in health care management are significantly underpaid compared to management in other fields with similar education levels (MBAs, fields such as financial companies, accounting firms, etc).

Is it not possible that the reason why health care is so expensive is because of excessive government intervention (as the graphs I originally posted eluded to)?

Now, if it fails to become the standard, and private health insurance companies find a way to keep their price and quality comparable.. then the public option will be pushed into a corner and would be like Prof S's "Catastrophic Care" which will only deal with cases private insurance reasonably would not want to handle. If this happens, tax dollars will continue to pay for it, but it would still address issues that people have with the healthcare system as-is.

Okay (I wanted to make sure to quote every single paragraph so nothing was taken "out of context").

I would not mind either result.

Okay.

The biggest fear I have about the public option, however, is that the governemnt will not play fair with it and continue to push private health insurance into failure by directly making changes in laws that make it impossible for them to compete. As long as the public option remains an OPTION, its win win.

This is the exact problem with medicare and medicaid, I hope you realize. The assumption with medicare and medicaid is that the government burdens the majority of the cost of the programs, but this is false. Rather, the majority, sixty cents on every dollar, is paid for by hospitals and health systems that must treat medicare and medicaid patients. Do you see that this is one of the reasons why insurance premiums are so high for private paying customers?

As you (and prof) mentioned earlier in the thread, loosening up regulations on private health insurance would do some good. However I don't feel that it would help without the public option playing some role in it. My problem with a "Catastrophic Care" type thing is that there's no potential for it to pay for itself whatsoever. If the public option morphs into that, we can at lest say we tried to save government money.

The theory of insurance is to save the end consumer money by pooling together similar risk exposures. This is why insurance companies are picky when choosing customers, otherwise, the theory of insurance collapses as the risk exposures are no longer similar in nature, which would in turn no longer save the end consumer money. If the public option were to accept any consumer, with varying risk exposures, the option would not operate in the traditional form of an "insurance company." Therefore, how do you propose that the option operate? How would it be able to pay out the money necessary if too many of the consumers had highly correlated risks, or were prone to have the same risk over and over again?

That would depend completly on how sucsessfull the program is as I stated above. Of course to start, it will not be deficit-neutral. Anyone with common sense knows that it will take money to get this thing rolling. As for the projection in the article, that would be unfortunate, but I think that it would be reasonable. It doesn't specify how much per year it would be exactly, because the truth is nobody knows. But it's a safe assumption that it will start off high then lower over time... but it depends on too many factors.

Okay.