The Hill now reports that its earlier story on Congressman Eric Cantor’s backpedaling on repeal of Obamacare was incorrect. He does not seek to preserve the proscription on exclusion of patients with preexisting conditions or the provision allowing 26-year-olds to remain on their parents’ policies. No indeed: Cantor continues to favor a full repeal of Obamacare.
Except that “We too don’t want to accept any insurance company’s denial of someone and coverage for that person because he or she may have [a] pre-existing condition. And likewise we want to make sure that someone of your age has the ability to access affordable care, whether it’s under your parents [sic] plan or elsewhere.”
So there we have it. Cantor favors a repeal of Obamacare; but promises separate legislation essentially reinstating it, with some differences in details from current law. Oh, please. If there is not actuarially fair pricing of coverage and no denial of coverage because of preexisting conditions, then the private insurance market will collapse, in that incentives to buy “insurance” only when sick will be powerful. Perhaps Cantor believes that we simply can subsidize the purchase of coverage for those with preexisting conditions. Not so fast: Will the Beltway really be able to define such conditions carefully and calibrate the appropriate subsidies? As the subsidies and the subsidized pool grow in response to the inevitable political pressures, how will a federal takeover of the insurance market be avoided? Etc.
Just as Mitt Romney inevitably will fail in his desperate quest to differentiate Romney-care from Obamacare — sorry, but they are identical in their essentials — so too will Republicans fail to prevent the descent into a single-payer system, with all of its perversities, by allowing the polls to dictate their policy proposals. We need to get the government out of the market for insurance contracts, out of the doctor-patient relationship, and out of the business of price controls on health-care services. The best we can do is subsidize the purchase of private coverage by those in financial need. The Cantor approach — if the reporting by The Hill is accurate — is worse than merely unprincipled. It will accelerate America’s metamorphosis into France.
— Benjamin Zycher is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.
Stay on this...muy importante. This kind of cowardice could mean the end of the G.O.P.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe post is completely correct. It raises the most crucial issue...
The Conservative vision of private, insurance-based health care services can only work if we're prepared to punish those without insurance by denying them care. Otherwise, as Zycher says, "the incentives to buy insurance only when sick will be powerful".
Are Conservatives ready to publicly advocate turning patients away at the Emergency Room door? Or will they acquiesce in the creation of still another entitlement while cynically preventing the implementation of the necessary tool to pay for it (the individual mandate)?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI completely concur about the probable unconstitutionality of an individual mandate and am very much opposed to it. But I do wonder: What is the conservative answer for people with pre-existing conditions?
With insurance so tightly tied to employment, mere fecklessness is hardly the only reason people come to be without health insurance. And for many people with a history of cancer, diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, and many other conditions, it is simply not possible to buy private insurance.
If insurance is unavailable at any price to a person willing to purchase it, and who may well have been insured until losing a job, it seems unsound policy to simply respond, "Tough luck. Bankrupt yourself and die."
Assigned risk pools? Small-employer pools? What's a reasonably workable conservative approach?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHey, Carl Eric Scott: Young people, especially young professionals are not going to be inslaved to pay for #1 old people and #2 sick people. Its not happening. If you've given people a reason NOT to be productive, try enforcing a mandate- it will go nowhere.
Perhaps if we junked the entire Social Security program for those who are retiring MORE THAN 15 years away and gave people some money for their own healthcare and the rest back to the states we can get a grip on this issue.
The federal government should not be in the healthcare business anymore because as usual, they FAIL AT IT! Only the poorest of the poor, and the sickest of the sick should be getting these funds.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBridey, none of the answers you mooted are really effective. As you noted, the federal government gives our employers monopoly control of our health dollars. This employer-based group coverage makes it impossible to pool risk, because policies are re-written annually. The federal government has tried to patch up the cracks with rules like COBRA and HIPAA but they do not address the core problem.
If health insurance was individually owned, people who owned policies continuously would never experience pre-existing conditions because their policies would protect them against that. The scholars who explain this best are Mark Pauly of Wharton Business School and John Cochrane of University of Chicago.
However, you don't need a theoretical explanation. Just look at the market for term-life insurance. Insurers guarantee you a premium when you buy a policy and it is fixed for the entire term. It doesn't matter what happens to your health condition during the term: You are protected from re-underwriting by the contract. I addressed this at some length in my analysis of Sen. McCain's helath proposal in 2008.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse