If you own an insurance company, you really couldn't ask for a better way to get the public's eye off the ball.
The difference between individual insurance mandates and workers comp is that individuals are not paying for workers comp, employers are. The difference between auto liability insurance and health insurance... well, let's just say single-payer car insurance is a great idea if the WTO doesn't come after your state for implementing it. We are required to have auto liability insurance (PIP) in Florida, but we also had the recent experience of homeowners insurance companies flee the state after a few hurricanes and now we have a state-financed property insurance company which has recently been allowed to undercut the rates of the private insurers. So go figure. That seems like a good way to cut out the health insurance companies, too, but I didn't see it in either Obama's or Clinton's plans.
>If you're going to have a big insurance system, you sure better make it so >that everyone has to have it.
Funny how that's not been a problem with Medicare.
Would someone explain to me again how the Clinton/Obama plans set the stage for single-payer other than through their sheer awfulness? Is it that rising expectations thing again? I understand that making employers pay something removes the incentive for deadbeat employers to stand in the way of national health insurance, but their opposition is nothing compared to that of the insurance/drug complex. I also see a slight possibility that if we are required by law to pay good money to insurance companies that we'll have some expectation that the same law that requires this tithing requires that we get something for it.
Krugman's off his nut if he thinks the insurance companies are going to acquiesce to even the loosest regulatory harness without a real threat of single-payer. He could raise that specter right now but he's waving the white flag.
Mike Ballard wrote:
>As the liberal Krugman says, he'd rather see a single payer system;
>but as he doesn't think that the majority of workers will vote for such a
>system yet (the level of 'informed' political ignorance is so high)
Really? Does he say that? Polls say exactly the opposite, that the public is for it.
>And Shane, the logic of making it a public responsibility to pay for education is the same the logic as making it a public responsibility to pay for health, right? Of course, even if the people without kids or people who choose to opt out of the public school system and pay private schools for the service. Same goes for the Christian Scientists and their refusal of medical help.
Except that this isn't in the form of a tax, it's in the form of requiring those individuals without insurance to pay a private company to provide it. So the equivalent would be requiring someone who can't afford, or doesn't want, to send their kids to private school to pay the private school tuition anyway. But then don't require that the school actually provide an education.
Jenny Brown