Well, of course you always have to take it to the next level. So now private businessmen are suing the government because they don’t want to provide health insurance to their employees if it has no co-pay or deductible for birth control pills. Frank R. O’Brien and O’Brien Industrial Holdings are leading the charge.
Here’s an idea for Frank and his Christy family of companies: single-payer universal health care.
I don’t want Frank to have to worry about his employees using birth control. I also don’t want Frank’s employees to have to put up with having their health decisions influenced by Frank’s religious beliefs. Why are employers expected to provide health insurance anyway? That’s a really stupid system.
So, let’s give both Frank and his employees a break. Frank won’t have to pay a dime for his workers’ health care and his workers can go back to not giving a damn about their boss’s religious beliefs.
Medicare for all, baby!! Even a guy who ‘specializes in shotcreting refractory materials in coal fired power generating stations’ can get behind that idea, right?
I think the argument boils down to the premise that for health insurance, when it comes to pregnancy and lady parts, moral issues take precedence over health issues; and the employer will set the moral criteria for health insurance.
This is Orly Taitz-style litigation.
Exactly. The whole free contraception provision is a strategic advance toward something closer to single payer health care. For me, as a diabetic who pays hundreds of dollars a month in co-pays for what are also preventive medicinal supplies, the whole idea of providing free contraception has never really resonated with me and does indeed seem pretty frivolous in some ways. After all, I die if I can’t get the supplies I need, so why should I have to pay when others can get contraception for free? I do support it, however, for two reasons: 1) It has managed to bring out the worst of GOP misogyny in an election year; and 2) it advances the single payer project, which is is the only solution to both controlling medical costs and providing people the treatment they need rather than the treatment they can afford.
Why aren’t much more heavily Catholic countries like Italy, France, Spain, etc. in a snit over contraceptives in their health care plans? Probably because individual businesses and organizations run by the church or anyone who might have a conscientious objection to paying for it doesn’t have to — the state takes it off their hands.
Sometimes you get the feeling that healthcare reform is a long game strategy. (1) Enact a Heritage Foundation plan that does not fully go into effect until the second midterm after the legislation passes; (2) Let the opposition unload all of their ammunition against what is in effect their own plan. (3) See where the public is on the issue at a midterm and a Presidential election. (4) Trust that the healthcare industry will continue to do what it has been doing and will try to undo any real restrictions in the legislation.
Sometimes. And only because of that counter-intuitive 2014 date for the main show of reforms to kick in.
I think the public is ready for Medicare for all (with some rollback of the GOP “reforms” to Medicare over the past 30 years). The key issue as with so much else is getting the Congress (Democratic and Republican) to do what the people want instead of what the lobbyists want.
yes, I’ve always thought they were playing the long term game. starting with the nonagression pact with big pharma.
Yep. Obama is the matador and the Republicans are the unwitting bull.
The current compromise is popular with almost no one because liberals/libertarians don’t like to be mandated to buy insurance from for profit insurance corporations, and insurance is not, in any case an appropriate model for what are pretty high claims frequencies.
So why don’t Obama/Democrats campaign on a proposal which at least unites their own base, circumvents legal issues, and meets at least some of the populist conservative objections to the measure – either single payer, or at the very least, a public option.
A public option would be an option for the individual and not for the employer and could cover those who are unemployed or employed by employers who do not wish to provide cover. Initially it might be a “poor man’s” insurance, but there is no reason why, once implemented, it cannot become an increasingly mainstream (and cheaper) option to private cover.
A huge proportion of private health premiums is expended on administrative, claims management, marketing, and shareholder dividends costs so a “public option” will always be able to provide better value for money. If the Government can prevent private plans from cherry picking low risk customers and also use its huge bargaining leverage with health care providers, there is no reason why the “public option” couldn’t become a no brainer for all except the Mitt Romney’s of this world.
Single payer? Buh…buh…but that’s SOCIALISM!!! We’re not really free unless our employers are free to choose for us.
No, wait. We’re not really free if our freedom to choose is provided by the government.
No. wait. Uh….
Speaking of socialism, have you seen the Senate Republicans calling for the privatization of Medicare again? They’re saying that their plans are so much better, and that’s why they’re on it — except none of the idiots are 65. I swear man…I don’t get how so many of us are unemployed and these morons have more wealth than God.
You’ve never heard the saying, “It t’aint what you know but who you know that creates success.”
And its modern version. “It t’aint who you know but who you kiss up to that creates success; choose wisely.”
IOW, you probably don’t want to have done what those morons did to get where they are.