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What Happened to Extending Congressional Health Plan To Everyone?
The health plan that our senators and congressional reps get to use is cheap (average premiums of $120 a month) and very effective (just ask Ted Kennedy) and has a role for private insurers (participants can choose from 300 providers, organized by unions and associations that represent the insured rather than HMOs but they still use private insurance).
Why can't we all just have that?
Because I'll tell you, we don't see Ted Kennedy's insurer saying "oh, he has a serious condition now, let's cut his coverage" the way we see that happen to normal people.
Maybe it's not exactly the federal plan that should be offered to everyone. I'd prefer single payer. But we can't have a situation where our elected representatives get better, cheaper, more generous healthcare than the rest of us. So long as our congressional reps have such great coverage, nobody in America should be uninsured. And if private industry can't treat us as well as it treats our representatives in Washington, then we don't have much need for private industry.
Why can't we all just have that?
Because I'll tell you, we don't see Ted Kennedy's insurer saying "oh, he has a serious condition now, let's cut his coverage" the way we see that happen to normal people.
Maybe it's not exactly the federal plan that should be offered to everyone. I'd prefer single payer. But we can't have a situation where our elected representatives get better, cheaper, more generous healthcare than the rest of us. So long as our congressional reps have such great coverage, nobody in America should be uninsured. And if private industry can't treat us as well as it treats our representatives in Washington, then we don't have much need for private industry.
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Why would you want just another private plan. Federal employees including members of Congress choose from a number of private plans.
June 17, 2009 6:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm all for knocking the private interests out. But the only alternative I can see that's acceptable is the congressional health plan where the private interests treat every customer like some one who has subpoena power.
June 18, 2009 12:41 AM | Reply | Permalink
Amen.
June 17, 2009 8:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hear Hear.
Great Post Dest
June 18, 2009 1:25 AM | Reply | Permalink
We can't afford that level of coverage for everyone, sad but true. Whoever promised it in a campaign, they were lying. I'm serious. Look, when you have universal coverage, the truth is some things have to be rationed, things that the wealthy can afford to have by paying out of pocket or having expensive extra insurance. BUT the truth also is that we have about equivalent rationing right now, only more unfair, without the benefit of universal coverage and with far higher overall costs as a percentage of GDP.
June 17, 2009 8:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
I mean things like experimental cancer treatments or stuff like MRI's when you have a backache or a full workover when you have chest pains. They've got a plan that just doesn't question anything, it is far far far better than Medicare, for example. And if you're number is right, those premiums are a joke, what a laugh, why bother making them pay anything if it covers so little of the actual cost?
June 17, 2009 8:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, I agree that we have rationing now. Of course we do. It's insurers rationing for us. But... even if the senate premiums are low because they are, literally and figuratively "the elect" those low premiums might well be made real by turning their plan over to the largest risk pool there is in the country -- the entire population.
But... here's an alternative... if giving the senate/congressional plan to the public really doesn't work, shouldn't they give the plan up in favor of something that more resembles the plight of average Americans? I don't think my senators are my betters.
June 18, 2009 12:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
shouldn't they give the plan up in favor of something that more resembles the plight of average Americans?
Yah! But at the very least, they shouldn't expect the taxpayers to pay for it.
Let the ones that don't have wealth besides their salary know what it feels like to have the same coverage the majority of the public has and to envy what the wealthy have. I think that's like: crucial.
Example: right now, they don't have to worry about no donut holes in their drug coverage, but they voted for a bill that has everyone over 65 having to worry about it....who sets the Medicare premiums every year? Who ok's what's covered on Medicare Part B? They do!
I'm betting that what's going to happen is that there is advisory panel that influences what's standard expected coverage and what's not. But that panel is not going to have the power of actually putting that into law. Congress will. With whatever the reform ends up being, I think it's sooooo crucial that Congress gets the standard and no more. No more gold plan for them.
June 18, 2009 12:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
June 18, 2009 2:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, and why do they get health care coverage for life? If we lose our jobs, we don't get to keep our health care coverage.
June 18, 2009 1:35 PM | Reply | Permalink
good post, Destor. Lots of good posts about health care. The hypocrisy is clear. When it comes to taxpayer-funded health care, Senators and Reps have no complaints when it's for them.
When it's for taxpayers, all of a sudden it's "you don't want Washington bureaucrats making decisions for you, quality of care would be awful..."
June 18, 2009 9:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Now this post is what I call stylin' and profilin'. Rec'd.
June 18, 2009 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sure you can have what Congress gets - as long as your willing to pay the COBRA equivalent premium for it.
June 18, 2009 11:23 AM | Reply | Permalink
Part of my demand is that we pay no more than they do. Congressional premiums are pretty inexpensive even for family coverage.
June 18, 2009 11:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent post, destor.
It may be that the plan proposed by Obama, and now under consideration by Congress, is based on the idea of an insurance exchange, such as the legislators have under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Although I favor single payer, that might be the best alternative, if the Congress just won't consider single payer. This Reuters article suggests that's the way Congress is leaning: http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE5503NA20090601
It's hard to know what will eventually happen though, since the lobbyists are out in droves. In my city all we see on TV are fear-mongering ads from conservative groups, trying to stop the "socialist" plans.
June 18, 2009 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
To paraphrase leftcoastindie...
Sure you can have what Congress gets - as long as you're willing to make the same compromises as its members make on the road there and in the practice of staying in each successive Congress.
I think that these 535 people tend to collapse their own idea of what they're entitled to with their own memories of what they've compromised--no, sacrificed to get to where they think they are.
I'm afraid that this, ah, unfortunate self deception is not limited to federal legislators, either.
Favorite sentence in the thread [so far], from lousgirl84:
Can you even imagine landing a job where the benefits weren't tied to employment status? Where you had health insurance and a pension, even if you were scandalized, even fired?
The more I think about it, the more it sounds like golden parachutes and other trappings of corporate officers. It's a brilliant illusion to have us looking at public and private officials as not only different, but as opposed to each other... when they're really inhabitants of the same space, breathing the same rarefied air.
You know, like criminals and law enforcement, less the rarefecation.
Continued institutional breakdowns such as these open up opportunities for alternative service providers.
June 18, 2009 4:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
What an excellent point. Imagine, you lose your job because your constituents decide you're incompetent or even dishonest or just plain embarrassing and you get to keep all the trappings -- pension and healthcare for life! And these are the people who say labor unions have too much power?
June 18, 2009 5:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
We have a taxpayer funded military and its the most advanced in the world.
Why can't we have a taxpayer funded healthcare system that is the most advanced in the world?
June 18, 2009 11:53 AM | Reply | Permalink
Because our taxpayer-funded military is devoted to freedom and democracy and a taxpayer-funded health care system would be devoted to socialism. Duh.
June 18, 2009 12:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks, Orlando, that was my first good laugh of the day.
June 18, 2009 12:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are so funny. You missed your calling
June 18, 2009 1:36 PM | Reply | Permalink
Think of this . . .
Now if my wife and I were to pay only 200 bucks a month in lieu of the 725 bucks currently paid (see: breakdown here) where do you think the 525 bucks we would save would eventually end up?
Anyone here wish to venture an answer?
~OGD~
June 18, 2009 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Egads, man, are you cutting out the shareholers?!?
They'll have to start drinking the house scotch. There will be panic on the street, Wall Street that is.
June 18, 2009 1:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
About anywhere else would be productive -- good for you and everyone around you!
June 18, 2009 1:27 PM | Reply | Permalink
Where's Mister Calculator Man?
Maybe he (this Cafe guy) could tell us if there would be any cost benefit to the nation?
Let's just say there are 100 million who could place 300 bucks saved from health insurance premiums per month into the economy in a productive way. What kind of boost would that be to the entire national economy in a year? In 5 years? In 10 years?
~OGD~
June 18, 2009 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
$360B/yr is about 2.5% of GDP rerouted away from where it has been going to where it would go.
Not clear that it would help the economy at all to reroute it, but it is clear that the current payers would benefit from additional control in the economy while the current recipients would lose out.
June 19, 2009 7:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
525 bucks, eh? Hmmmmm......
Hey OGD! Lend me 525 bucks?
June 18, 2009 1:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
The better question now is "What happened to healthcare reform?" See TPM front page.
June 18, 2009 5:11 PM | Reply | Permalink