Thursday, December 4, 2008

BG: Health insurers lay out a path to universal care

Insurers would agree to stop denying coverage to people because of preexisting conditions as long as all individuals were required by law to buy insurance. [....] basic high-deductible health insurance plans with a streamlined set of benefits would be available in all 50 states. [T]he government would give refundable tax credits on a sliding scale, according to income. Medicaid should cover everybody under the poverty level, the insurers said, and the State Children's Health Insurance Program should cover all children up to 300 percent of the poverty level.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/12/04/health_insurers_lay_out_a_path_to_universal_care/

3 comments:

blue said...

This is a lot like setting the wolf to guard the henhouse. If Kennedy and Daschle have much to do with this it will surely be a boon for the big insurance companies right out of the box. The influence of health insurance lobby people is simply fearful and it is hard to imagine really sensible improvement coming from this initiative if the insurers are writing the script.

1950 Democrat said...

Yep. Daschle seems a blatant wolf here.

Larry Summers (a new White House advisor, Treasury Sec in the late 90s) wants the government to pay for it all but let patients choose their plan (ie, presumably, their insurance company).

Anonymous said...

... Health care reform is another obvious priority. In Summers’s view, the current employer-based system, which creates insecurity for many families and big costs for companies, may need to be replaced by one in which the government pays for insurance but individuals choose what plan they want. It would be single payer, but not as England or Canada does it.