Nontroversy: Outrage over private insurers administering public option

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Contractors run a lot of medicare. Contractors would run a lot of a large public option. Private insurers are set up for such work.

There's no controversy there. The objective is to provide the best deal for people, not the worst deal for insurers.

Contracting is often corrupt in practice but it is not intrinsically corrupt, conceptually. The fact that somebody makes money along the line does not make a plan "for profit." (When Amnesty International buys office supplies somebody is making a profit.)

Everything we are talking about is about money... who gets what where, who is charged x for y. Moving money around from premiums/revenues to providers/patients.

The bottom line is that patient Z gets coverage X for Y dollars. That is the policy objective.

If the best method to accomplish that involves contracting out management/administrative work then that's what it is.

If the government is going to have to set up a vast self-contained administrative agency to run a start-up PO then a PO will be very expensive up-front and delayed forever.

So in the mix of stories out there that offer serious concerns, the fact that some paperwork duties will--of practical necessity--will be contracted to private insurers is not so worrisome.

(A pet stimulus idea of mine was/is for the federal government to refinance a trillion dollars of revolving consumer debt at Prime+2%. I assumed that after buying up such debt from credit card companies the government would pay the companies to collect the new lower payments... because they are already collecting payments from the same people. They are set up for it and the government is not. As with the Public Option example, the bottom line would be what size check the citizen writes every month. Whatever makes that check lower is better, even if it means that Chase or Citibank would get paid for administering/collecting and forwarding the money to the government.)

[phleshdef]

1. As long as people get coverage for the treatments they need, I don't care who does the paperwork.

Thats what this whole thing is about, people need to be able to walk into a hospital or a clinic and get whatever it is done that they need to get done in order to get over whatever ails them and not have to worry about it breaking their bank account. I don't care how they pull that off as long as they do.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. Exactly - get good policy objectives and then accomplish them efficiently

[bluestateguy]

3. Government employees "government run health care" is really private insurance paid for by government

nt

[Laelth]

4. It matters a great deal, to me, who pushes the paper.

In principle and in practice, turning over the public option to private businesses defeats the purpose of the public option (taking the profit motive out of health insurance).

:dem:

-Laelth

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

7. I would support a National Health system

I don't think anything short of a true national health service removes profit. And if that were on the ballot I'd vote for it.

But there is nothing under practical discussion right now that would remove profit from health care.

Even medicare for all would just be a system for writing checks to for-profit entities. (Hospitals, drug-makers, etc.)

You and I agree that profit in healthcare is a bad thing, but since profit is a facet of all plans currently under consideration I don't find contracting administrative work more odious than paying for-profit hospitals or pill-makers.

The fact that we contract a lot of the medicare system suggests to me that it is not incompatible with lower costs. Administrative costs for medicare are much lower than what private insurer manages.

[Oregone]

8. Oh come on. I promise the overhead you pay by privatizing it will be worth it!

I promise

[msallied]

5. I agree. Private insurance isn't going to go away.

It exists in countries with single payer and it will continue to exist here. But as long as people have a viable choice, I'm happy. That and for someone whose husband just lost his job (and our insurance), I can personally relate to the need for a public option as well as the other reforms on pre-existing conditions.

[OHdem10]

6. Have we not learned lessons about these contracts??? Often

they end up being rip offs. Walter Reed, shall I go on.

We listen to Hearings on the Hill and they keep on contracting
out.

This is beginning to look like a nothing bill anyway. Who
cares what happens to the people???