A front page story in the Bee today describes the outlines of a plan to insure all Americans being offered by the health insurance industry. It seems that a new opportunity to address this gnawing issue is at hand, after a decade or more of blather and neglect.
A couple of lines from the story: "...growing pressure from business and labor leaders feeling the pain of rising costs, could open the way for at least some progress," and " ... the business community seems interested in seizing the opportunity."
I've been puzzled why the business community hasn't been at the forefront of this debate. Many of the costs of health care in this country fall directly on business, large and small. More and more of them are eliminating or drastically cutting back health care for their employees, which puts them at a competitive disadvantage when they seek to hire the best people. so why aren't they pushing for change? Maybe that's about to begin.
I hope this issue is going to be addressed now. We can't keep sticking our heads under the sand and pretending there's no problem. Both the public and private sectors are paying far too much for health care, and getting too little for our buck and leaving far too many people uncovered.
This proposal may be a good place to begin discussions, but I don't want to see a plan that simply transfers large amounts of public funds to the insurance industry (like the drug benefit program did for the pharmaceutical industry). Let the discussions and negotiations begin!
It'll be interesting to see what comes of this -- the coalitions required to get something big like this through will be very strange. Particularly from the traditional left/right viewpoint.
the insurance industry is the problem....taking seriously any "solutions"emenating from them would be like asking james baker to solve the iraq quagmire.
The insurance industry may be the problem (I think thats a bit simplistic) but at least I give them kudos for putting something forward that all interested parties can review.