The Three Public Health Plans to Be Discussed

It seems that private health insurers have a right to be scared because the Big Bad Government will soon be in direct competition with them.

The three approaches being discussed are:

_Create a plan that resembles Medicare, administered by the Health and Human Services department.

_Adopt a Medicare-like plan, but pick an outside party to run it. That way government officials would not directly control the day-to-day operations.

_Leave it up to individual states to set up a public insurance plan for their residents.

So we either have a huge ad- on to Medicare and give massive new powers to the Dept. of Health and Human Services. We could have a Fannie Mae for health care where an outside company runs the plan. That worked out so well for housing. Or they can punt it to states who are barely able to cope with regular Medicare costs let alone insuring everyone in the state. I think all three plans are non-starters.

Also it really matters whether everyone gets to sign up for the plan or if it is only open to uninsured people who make under a certain amount or the self-employed. If it is open to everyone then the fees must pay for the plan or it will just be a huge money suck for decades to come.

In any case short Health Insurance companies because they will be going the way of Sallie Mae now that the government is going to run them all out of business.