HI - It's that lurker again.
All that has been said is pertainant and logical for people in this country
who are working and have a decent income. Shopping around CAN save a lot of
money. I cut my car insurance 50% when I started shopping. I soon learned
that the low income people are the most likely to get shafted when buying
ANYTHING!!
The last numbers I saw from the Government itself placed the National
poverty level at $800 per month. The latest figures from HUD placed the
number of elderly and disabled alone (not including low income families) in
San Diego County at over 50,000. What do we do with this portion of the
population? Just let them crawl in a corner and die just because they are no
longer "productive " workers? That sounds like a Fascist attitude to me.
Most low income elderly, disabled, and even working families MUST make a
choice about buying insurance or putting food on the tables or what "new"
clothing are they going to buy from the thrift shop.
I doesn't take a high IQ bean counter to figure that the tax money spent by
the US government alone on our so-called Health Care system could place all
doctors and hospitals on salary at a decent income (not excessive) and
provide FREE health care for everyone. I know, this is against the "free
enterprise" system that everyone touts as being the ideal. In fact it seems
a bit "Communistic" but it would be our tax money paying for it - not a FREE
handout.
Our government talks about "tax and spend" politicians when it refers to
using tax money for the benefit of the people. NOT ALL PEOPLE who are
getting these benefits are loafers, living at the expense of others. Most
are people who have worked hard for years and are beyond the point of doing
manual (or most other) labor. Those who abuse the system SHOULD be bounced
off the rolls. Our "borrow and waste" politicians who are shifting the debt
to our great-grandchildern haven't elimiated the taxes (except for the very
rich). What are they doing with all of the tax money that is still going
into the coffers?
I worked for the welfare Department for a while many years ago, and I could
go into a LONG rant about the unfairness of THEIR rules - but that is
another subject. Lets just say that I didn't stay in that job too long.
Our wonderful standard of living with probably the highest wages in the
world is due to an endless cycle of "raise the wages" followed by another
endless round of "raise the prices." That, coupled with our easy credit
system which most other countries do not have - hardly a day goes by without
another "pre-approved" platinum credit card offer in the mail - accounts for
the disparity of our wages with the incomes in other countries. The last
figures I saw placed GOOD programmers available in India at about $10,000
per year.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert Donovan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Main Discussion List for KPLUG" <[email protected]>
Sent: Sunday, October 01, 2006 10:19 AM
Subject: Re: [Kooler] Healthcare (Was: IBM to support the PRC's version
ofLinux)LONG POST
On 10/1/06, Neil Schneider <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Robert Donovan wrote:
> What we need to do is get from the curent arrangement of doctors,
> hospitals,
> and patients competing for insurance money to doctors hospitals and
> insurance companies competing for the patient's money. To do that, do
> three
> things, REMOVE the tax exemption for employer provided health benefits
> and
> REPLACE it with an equal tax exempt status for higher wages to get
> employees
> demanding higher cash wages to buy their own healthcare, and make ANY
> third-party payer health benefits from employer to employee illegal,
> period.
I refer you to the very next sentence in my original post. The employer
would be the one negotiating with the insurance companies for the
policies.
They would just be negotiating for individual policies to purchased and
owned by the empolyees, paid for with the tax-exempt cash wages the
employer
would pay them for the purpose.
Insurancese companies hold all the cards. And who really believes that an
individual has a better negotiating position than another corporation.
If you believe individuals can negoiate themselves a better deal than
they now get through their employer I have some beachfront property in
Yuma I'd like to sell you.
The individuals wouldn't negotiate the policy. They'd shop for it.
Insurance
companies hold all the cards under the current system precisely because
the
third party payer system virtually removes all competition for the
individual's money. And yes, I think individuals are smart enough to
figure
out what is the best deal for them. We do it with every other type of
insurance we buy right now. I just bought new car insurance and homeowners
insurance online and shopped about five differnet policies. It was
convoluted and tedious at times, but very doable. Healthcare should be no
different. The reason it is different is due entirely to the fact that
there
is far less of a market for individual health insurance any more because
the
business policies are so much more lucrative and, outside of the still
very
small, restrictively regulated, HSA market, there is little choice or
incentive for the employer to shop around for the best policy, only the
best
price. The tax-exempt status of employer-provided health benefits also
encourages focus on price rather than quality. By flipping the tax-exempt
status for healthcare via the employer to cash wages, employers are
encouraged to pay more money for healthcare to employees directly. Making
third-party payer arrangements illegal takes away the profits to the
insurance company for these policies and forces them to either start
creating individual policies or lose billions in annual profits.
Disallowing
any exclusive deals between the insurance company and employer and/or the
employee for health insurance puts the empolyers in a better negotiating
position for group policies at better prices because the insurance
companies
would know that the business owner and the employees could go down the
street to the competition at any time. There is no better mechanism in the
world for keeping prices down without creating shortages than that, and it
encourages delivery of more service for a given price rather than less, as
it is under the current system, to attract and keep new and existing
customers.
Here's what would really happen with your plan. It would accelerate
the existing trend for mployers to stop offering healthcare as a
benefit.
My plan doesn't encourage removal of healthcare as a benefit, it
encourages
changing it from an in-kind payment to a cash payment of equal value by
swithcing the tax-exempt status from in-kind to cash wages. Employees who
managed to get better prices on insurance or to reduce their medical
expenses would see an increase in net wages, not a decrease. Employers
usually have a much harder time reducing cash wages than they do in-kind
benefits. That's not to say that employers wouldn't try, but changes in
cash
wages are immediately and acutely felt by employees, and are ususally the
last thing employers reduce to save money. They will usually remove perks
and benefits first because their absence is not immediately felt in the
case
of most workers.
Wages would continue to remain stagnant or decline, and the
standard of living for american employers would decline even more
rapidly than it is today.
I refer you to my last remarks.
RD
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