Sell Me The Plan Mr. President

    My employer provides me health insurance and I’m very satisfied with it.  There, I said it, phew that feels good! With the words “crisis” and “catastrophe” dominating the health care debate, I thought my opinion was in the minority but according to a recent CNN poll, 3 out of 4 of people with health insurance are happy with it, (CNNpolitics.com, Aug. 5).

   Is there room for improvement?  Of course, especially for those facing huge medical costs and possible bankruptcy. The mammoth bills produced by Congress so far do little to address this though and while no voting will happen before fall, there are issues that need to be looked at more closely now.

   My first thought is WIIFM?  In the sales world of which I belong to, that’s known as “What’s In It For Me” and is a crucial factor when convincing somebody to buy your product. So far I’ve seen few answers to WIIFM for the average insured working person and many red flags.

  First there is the very real possibility that I will lose my existing coverage because of the infamous government option favored by the President and many Democrats.  It’s being offered as a way to “compete” with private insurers, which is absurd.  Government entities don’t have to meet payroll or practice efficiency.  They just raise taxes for more revenue or strong-arm providers by setting unrealistic prices, pushing insurers to make up for this by driving up premiums for everyone else.  This alone could cause many companies to stop providing health benefits, as it could end up being cheaper to just pay the penalty fee (up to 8% of payroll), than offer coverage.

   Then there is Erisa, otherwise known as the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, that allows self-insured companies to bypass individual state health care rules, (a bureaucratic leviathan of mandates and regulations) in order to provide uniform health care to its employees.  The House bill phases this out and forces companies to kiss the bureaucratic ring of the Department of Labor who will set “acceptable” coverage standards and fine employers who don’t comply, (“Repealing Erisa”, Editorial. Wall Street Journal, July 20).  Of course this too will incentivize companies to stop covering employees and who could blame them?  Who would be dumb enough to keep offering a health plan when not doing so allows them to pay less and avoid dealing with a cumbersome regulatory agency?

   If my insurance benefits vaporize and I’m forced in to a government plan, what becomes of my existing coverage?  Will I get to keep my doctor?  What about quality of care and how long will I have to wait to get treated?  Every government run health plan in the world, without exception, faces rationing, increased wait times (in parts of Canada, plan on waiting 20 hours before seeing an ER doctor) and poor levels of service.  No one has yet to answer how the U.S will avoid this fate if we pull the lever on socialized medicine.

   My third concern is for my aging parents, two relatively healthy 70 somethings, and a concept called comparative effectiveness research. This popped up in the February stimulus bill (how this stimulates jobs is a mystery) and is a method of determining medical care based on a person’s age.  In other countries this has led to denying treatments to older patients.  Will that happen here?  Note the health care bill’s emphasis on providing seniors with end of life care counseling and it’s hard not to be concerned.  If my parents get sick will a nameless, unaccountable bureaucrat determine their fate by punching formulas in to a quality of life calculator?

   Then there are my young nieces and nephews.  We are facing unprecedented levels of debt in this country that they, their kids and probably their kid’s kids will be paying off and yet we’re talking about spending another trillion or two more?  I’m no economist but this sounds insane.  Yes, medical costs and coverage could be better but there are other ways of addressing this that don’t involve a vast expansion of government and to the moon budgets.

   Why not first try giving us average folks the tax breaks companies get for buying insurance and getting rid of coverage mandates that drive up costs?  Or let providers sell insurance across state lines, which will open up competition? Why not make an aggressive effort to enroll those who qualify for Medicaid but who for whatever reasons have not signed up and provide vouchers for those who truly can’t afford coverage?  Why do we have to rush a bill through that completely re-vamps a health-care system that the majority of Americans are satisfied with?  We’re talking about almost 20% of the economy here, shouldn’t we be proceeding with much more caution?

   Health-care is such a personal issue and emotions run high when dealing with the very real problem of sick people not being able to get care. However, the United States leads the world in medical innovation and our system, minus a few warts, is still considered the best there is which is why people come from all over to get treated.  We should not scrap it all in return for a government run solution brought to you by the same people who bankrupted Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  I’d like to know What’s In It For Me if we do that?