NEOAVATARA

The all out move for national health care reform began in earnest this week.  First, Democrat leaders (Republicans not invited) met at the White House, where Barack Obama stressed that he wanted to get a deal done soon.  Then, numerous ideas for plans have leadked out during the weak, including the concept of taxing health care benefits, which is gaining steam in Democratic circles.  And finally, Obama’s own plan has been released (on the weekend, no less; think they are worried?); the bill is HUGE…and can be read here.   I am slowly going through it myself.

Here are just some of the things in the Obama Care proposal:

• The Treasury Secretary basically can have full access to your medical records, as the government sees fit….no warrant would be necessary.  This completely violates HIPAA, so I wonder if they would retract that law?
• Treasury and HHS would be allowed to imposed penalties on individuals and business who do not comply with mandates.
• Health care insurer cannot use risk factors to vary costs.  For example, if you are nonsmoker, you will now pay the same rate as you smoking buddies…lovely.  There is no benefit to healthy living in this proposal.
• And these are just the things I have so far found.

Now, Ted Kennedy has proposed to mandate that all employers in the U.S. be forced to give health care benefits to their employees.  Oh, and there are more strings.  The bill would provide subsidies to help poor people pay for care, guarantee patients the right to select any doctor they want and require everyone to purchase insurance, with exceptions for those who can’t afford to.  Insurers would be supposed to offer a basic level of care and would be required to cover all comers, without turning people away because ofpre-existing conditions or other reasons. Insurance companies‘ profits would be limited, and private companies would have to compete with a new public “affordable access” plan that would for the first time offer government-sponsored health care to Americans not eligible for Medicare, Medicaid or other programs.

That sounds great…until you use a little intellectualism.

First, the federal mandate that would force employers to give benefits to all employees would dramatically drive up the cost of each additional employee.  In our current economic situation, where the unemployment rate skyrocketed to 9.4% last month, that doesn’t seem very smart.  Additionally, the few jobs that are being produced are from small businesses, who are at most risk from government mandates such as this.

Second, limiting insurance company profits is for all practical purposes a penalty for doing business.  What possible reason is their to impose that, other then as retribution?  If an insurer can make money and still provide service, why shouldn’t they?  What we will begin to see is many insurance companies move out of the health care business all together, and leave it to Medicare and Medicaid to handle.

And all this doesn’t even get to the biggest problem: that we as a country are out of money.  But President Obama will surely pull out his credit card and take care of us all, don’t worry.