There will be losers and who the losers are and how much they lose has always been the backbreaker to any meaningful reform. Big Pharma and Big Insurers have always muscled their way past Senate and House receptionists to nail down their interests.
But CAHR is the long awaited hole in the dike and dissatisfied workers didn’t cause the breach, stockholders are the ones shaking their fists. PepsiCo isn’t about to go down the tubes because retirees swamped their boat.
The Coalition has endorsed five core principles to guide health care reform. Reforms must result in a market-based health care system; individuals must carry mandated health insurance coverage; coverage for low-income individuals will be subsidized; reforms must include strong personal financial incentives for adopting healthy behaviors; and the difference in tax treatment between employer-provided and individual health insurance policies must be eliminated.
That’s eye-wash. Mandated by whom? Subsidized by whom? Financial incentives for healthy behavior? Are they kidding? They can get same-tax-treatment between employers and employees, but only with a single-payer (federal) system supported by the general tax base. And they know it.
They will get it. Single-payer will
- squeeze 40% of the cost out of the system,
- take 50 million uninsured off the rolls,
- unburden businesses all the way from the mom-and-pop drycleaner to General Motors (if there still is a GM).
United Airlines can fly the friendly skies instead of skidding through the bankruptcy courts of America. The quid-pro-quo is probably that American business and industry will have to come home and pay their taxes. They will probably have to pay an additional ‘health tax’ of some sort as the price to unburden themselves, but they’ll be eager as hell to do so.
Unburdened, they are worth additional gazillions and if a GlaxoSmithKline here or an HMO there gets their floor waxed, so be it. The Private Equity Market that has just recently defined itself will be wowed. If a pharmaceutical or a health insurer takes a hit along the way to wow, that’s just Darwinian Republicanism.
At least initially, it doesn't look as though the Coalition members are proposing to shirk their health insurance obligations. Instead the Coalition aims to put those responsibilities where they properly belong—into the hands of individual Americans. If so, that would be a big win/win for both employers and employees.
Which would be a crock and a sham, if businesses were really serious and really meant it. But solving their health care problem for today’s employee doesn’t solve it for retirees and that’s where the shoe pinches. That’s like ‘solving’ social security with an immediate annuity-based system. What about the folks with their hand already out?
Business, large and small, is taking off their wire-rimmed glasses, wiping their eyes and trying out the phrase--single-payer socialized medicine. It takes a little getting used to. But so does the Ghost of Illness Yet to Come.
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Media comment;
- Washington Post-Talks Aimed at Automakers'
- Detroit Free Press-UAW stance on health care worries workers
- Reasononline-Big Business Proposes Health Care Reform
- Wall Street Journal-Health Care and Taxes
- Forbes-Solutions: Health Care
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