What’s missing from Sen. McCain’s new health care proposal is also absent from those put forth by Giuliani and Romney – any connection to the real world of the middle class. Their programs are heavy on tax policy with a dollop of FDA streamlining, accompanied by lofty paeans to the free market and reliance on individuals’ ability to make the right choices.
What they don’t do is increase the availability of insurance, reduce its cost, or address exclusions for pre-existing conditions. Yet these are precisely the problems faced by voters today.
The Graeme problem is real. Families with modest incomes can’t afford health insurance, and if they can afford it, the underwriting process often excludes pre-existing conditions (my eyes, your heart, your neighbor’s back, your sister’s cancer) or prices coverage so high that the policy is essentially unaffordable.
This is how the vaunted free market works today – insurers work very hard to not insure people likely to need insurance. That’s not because insurers are bad, it is because the system rewards them for that behavior. What I don’t get is why the GOP candidates think their policies will make any difference. If any of these gentlemen think that insurers are suddenly going to compete to sell health insurance to arthritic ex-football players with bad knees and a family history of heart disease presently being treated for depression they are dumber than a box of rocks.
The three GOP contenders may be many things, but dumb they are not. Notably, not one has told us what their programs will cost (meanwhile the media is trumpeting the cost of the Clinton and Edwards proposals), and only McCain has given any indication where he’ll find the money to pay for his ideas (how he can do that without knowing what it will cost is another mystery.) But that’s smart – if their health reform proposals have dollar signs with lots of zeroes attached to them, and if those reforms are funded by cuts elsewhere or higher taxes, they will get murdered in the primaries.
The general election is another story altogether.
Most Americans desperately want affordable health insurance without exclusions and limitations. We are all getting older, acquiring new aches and pains and getting treatment for those niggling little issues like high cholesterol and too much sun in our youth. And this is precisely where the GOP platforms fall apart. Without mandated coverage, I’m always going to be self-insured for my eyes, you are for your heart, your neighbor for her back, your sister for cancer.
The free market paeans may sound great in speeches to the Club for Growth, but they will be met by stony silence at the Rotary. Real people want real answers, and the GOP candidates have none.
“reduce its cost”
OK, so how do you propose to reduce the cost of insurance?
I think that reducing the cost of insurance by fiat of some kind is not a real-world solution to the problem of high insurance cost – or of high health care cost, for that matter. I mean, I don’t see how mandating lower premiums (income) can possibly reduce cost (expenses). But what do I know, I’m just one of the girls driving a mini van. . .
For example, I don’t think insurance and health care are synonymous. From what I read, a lot of people don’t agree with me about that. But, if the terms are actually synonymous, then maybe the solution to high insurance cost is simple: mandate inexpensive insurance and the cost of health care will then also become inexpensive.
This problem has been nagging at us for more than 40 years. Even Moses found his way out of the wilderness in 40 years. If the solution were simple, wouldn’t some latter-day Moses have stumbled on it by now? Do we have to wait for Hillary to be elected in order for the government to solve the problem for us?