Please explain to me how companies dropping their group plans for employees is a good thing? I can't wait to hear this BS.
You're a conservative who hasn't read any Milton Friedman? I'd recommend starting with
Capitalism and Freedom, it's pretty seminal.
Employer-sponsorship of health insurance is distortionary. It only came about through an accident of history, World War II-era policies that the public demanded be enshrined in law after the war ended. As it happens now, people like me are stuck in a given plan because our employer doesn't offer any choice (people with larger employers may have more choice but still not the full menu of options that will be available in the exchanges). Decision-making about that particular choice isn't done by me or my co-workers, it's done at the top of the organizational chart. That severely hampers my ability to shop for something I like. And by "severely hampers," I mean "virtually eliminates." Which is why it's so distortionary.
And that's why a number of thinkers--of all ideological persuasions--support getting rid of it. See boedicca's post above arguing that the tax exemption on employer-sponsored plans should be extended to all plans. The intent of that policy change is to eliminate the tax preference for employer-provided insurance and thus to ultimately end that system. And when you do that, everyone goes into the same marketplace and everyone gets to choose a plan from the full array of choices available in that marketplace (which, as I said, people like myself can't currently do). That's what "portability" means--decoupling health insurance from job status.
And I'm all for that. I have a soft spot for the Wyden-Bennett bill that would've transitioned everyone into the same marketplace. Wyden himself actually aggressively attempted to get a variation of that proposal placed into the law the ultimately passed--he favored including free choice vouchers in which an employee could, if he so chose, take his employer's contribution to his health insurance and go into the new health insurance exchanges by himself to put it toward any plan he wanted (and not specifically one of his employer's choosing). A weak version of that proposal was ultimately included, but the free choice vouchers are only available to people who are paying between 8 and 9.8 percent of their income on the premiums for their employer-sponsored plan.
The problem is that people want stability--abrupt change is generally not favored. Thus politicians have to promise "if you like your plan you can keep it" and contort themselves into all sorts of odd shapes as they attempt to preserve the existing system. That's part of the reason there's an quasi-employer mandate. But ultimately I hope we can transition away from the employer-based system and more toward one in which everyone exists as an individual making his own choices in the health insurance exchanges. That would be a good thing.
By the way; It's kind of hard to make use of it unless they post it first. But by the time they post it..it's already law or they wait so late that you only have a few hours to read it before it's voted on. Reading it after the fact is counterproductive for the debate and not what they said would happen...not to mention highly suspect.
A few hours to read it? The health care bill that became law is
H.R. 3590, released with Reid's manager's amendment on November 19, 2009. It passed the Senate in a vote on
Christmas Eve and the House--unaltered--on
March 21.
It was accompanied by a relatively short
reconciliation bill making certain changes, noted in the section-by-section summary posted above. That bill was publicly available on March 17. It passed the Senate on
March 25 and the House
later that day.
However, even this is misleading because these are the final products of a process that started evolving in July of 2009. When H.R. 3590 came out, it was a synthesis of the two Senate bills that had been marked up in committee, the Senate Finance Committee's bill and the Senate HELP Committee's bill. The provisions in the final combined bill didn't emerge out of the blue, they were debated extensively in those two committees starting in the summer of 2009. Thus if you'd followed the process from the start, the final bill (which you had over a month to read through before the first Senate vote and four months to read through before it was voted on in the House) would've contained little that was new to you. The same goes for the reconciliation bill, since its contents were revealed before the actual text of the bill was released.
What provisions are being added? Are you talking about the administrative rulemaking process that's going on in the Department of Health and Human Services? Rulemaking is required by the text of the legislation and doesn't have much to do with Congress at this point.
See above.
I love how "the existence of cheaper alternatives" has a derogatory connotation in your posts. What sort of conservative are you, I wonder?
I agree the moral component of employer-sponsored insurance will be removed, as employees will no longer have bad options in a shitty, largely unregulated individual market as the only alternative to a plan through their employer. You seem to agree, as well, that an employer shouldn't lose any sleep about sending his employees on their own merry way to buy insurance through the exchanges (which I hope you realize is a tacit admission that the individual market is going to be a significantly better place to buy insurance due to reform).
But the financial reasons are still there. Employees now face an individual mandate to have coverage, meaning they'll be demanding coverage as much as (if not more than) ever. The tax preference for health care premium dollars over actual dollars still exists, though it will no longer be limitless thanks to the excise tax on high-cost plans. And ultimately employers are going to be compensating their employees some amount--if some of that is in wages and some is in the form of health benefits, okay. But if an employer decides to terminate coverage, he can't simply delete that part of his employee's compensation package, he'll have to compensate with increased wages (a guy making $40,000 a year with a health package worth $5,000 a year isn't being compensated $40,000 for his position, he's being compensated $45,000--if you want to alter the allocation of the components of his package, that's one thing but lowering his compensation by an amount equal to his health benefit is a different beast entirely). To suggest otherwise is to suggest that all employees are currently greatly overcompensated for the work they do, which is somewhat of an odd market failure.
That's (the bolded bit) kind of my point. Price rations goods. Price rations health care goods. We
do ration now, that statement shouldn't be controversial to anyone who has taken an introductory economics course and recognizes that health care is not an unlimited resource.
Yes, The Powers That Be care very much about the opinions of posters on this board. Busted!
Anyway, what is it you want me to respond to? Of course the law has flaws. As I just spent some time saying, I wish it would make an aggressive push to transition away from employer-sponsored coverage. It does some rooting around the edges (i.e. giving employers the options of taking employees into the exchanges), which pacifies me a bit, but I think they missed an opportunity here. But that's the nature of the political process. I was very pleased, however, that the primary funding mechanism they went with turned out to be the excise tax instead of the income tax favored by liberals. The excise tax is a much better policy tool here.
I also think I've made it pretty clear in this thread I think something needs to be done to address provider consolidation and their role in skyrocketing costs. Most of the cost control options in the bill are aimed at the consumer (e.g. the excise tax on high-cost plans, designed in part to put a drag on rising costs) and at improving the delivery system so that it operates more effectively and more efficiently. While I'm fairly confident some of the many delivery system reforms that will be tested under this law will lower costs through quality and efficiency gains, that doesn't necessarily mean
prices will go down since in the current system prices don't necessarily reflect costs due to the power of providers. That's a huge weakness that's going to need to be addressed by someone down the line.
I went to see Inception again, apologies. Very enjoyable, I highly recommend it.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here. The bulk of the money spent here goes to consumers, who use it to choose an insurance plan that's to their liking. These are means-tested premium tax credits that give support to shoppers in the exchanges (i.e. the new individual market).
I'm discovering that I'm apparently a bit more conservative and pro-competition than some of you. I suppose that is telling.
The exchanges do not contain public plans. I've argued in this thread that they
should include one but in the law as it stands now they do not. If your employer drops coverage, you go buy your own individual
private plan.
Yes he has facts, but why won't he answer the obvious flaws?
What do you want to talk about? If it isn't obvious by now that I'm willing to engage in an actual discussion with you, I don't know how to make that any more clear.
He's been kicking his own ass as the facts he has been presenting undermine his own case when properly illuminated.
Can you elaborate?
