John Edwards: New Health Care Markets

[LSK]

New Health Care Markets. The U.S. government will help states and groups of states create
regional Health Care Markets, non-profit purchasing pools that offer a choice of competing insurance
plans. At least one plan would be a public program based upon Medicare. All plans will include
comprehensive benefits, including full mental health benefits. Families and businesses could choose to
supplement their coverage with additional benefits. The markets will be available to everyone who
does not get comparable insurance from their jobs or a public program and to employers that choose to
join rather than offer their own insurance plans. The benefits of Health Care Markets include:

• Freedom and Security: Health Care Markets will give participants a choice among affordable,
quality plans. Americans can keep Health Care Market plans when they change or lose their jobs,
start new businesses, or take time off for caregiving.

• Choice between Public and Private Insurers: Health Care Markets will offer a choice between
private insurers and a public insurance plan modeled after Medicare, but separate and apart from it.
Families and individuals will choose the plan that works best for them. This American solution
will reward the sector that offers the best care at the best price. Over time, the system may evolve
toward a single-payer approach if individuals and businesses prefer the public plan.

• Promoting Affordable Care: Health Care Markets will negotiate low premiums through their
economies of scale so they can get a better deal than individuals and many businesses can get on
their own. Health Care Markets will also hold down administrative costs by reducing the need for
underwriting and marketing activities (two-thirds of private insurers’ overhead), centrally
collecting premiums, and exercising leadership to reduce costs on billing practices, claims
processing, and electronic medical records. Finally, they will be able to work with insurers to
adopt cost-effective approaches to health care like preventive care and to collect the data necessary
to drive quality improvement.

• Reducing Burdens for Businesses: By assuming the administrative role of negotiating benefit
plans with insurers and collecting premiums, Health Care Markets will minimize administrative
burdens for participating businesses and other employers. Businesses that opt into the markets will
only have to make financial contributions to the cost of covering their employees through markets,
similar to their role in Social Security and Medicare.

http://www.johnedwards.com/about/issues/health-care-overview.pdf

Let me REPEAT:
"Health Care Markets will offer a choice between private insurers and a public insurance plan modeled after Medicare, but separate and apart from it.
Families and individuals will choose the plan that works best for them. This American solution
will reward the sector that offers the best care at the best price. Over time, the system may evolve
toward a single-payer approach if individuals and businesses prefer the public plan."

John Edwards plan is a slow death for private insurance companies by undercutting them. It is realistic. It is a path to what we all want.

[Selatius]

1. John Edwards' plan provides the best hope towards single-payer coverage

The simple fact is if you put Medicare in direct competition with private, for-profit health insurance companies, Medicare or some equivalent would win hands down in nearly all cases in the end.

Medicare does not have the burden of paying executive compensation packages, the burden of delivering profits to shareholders by underpaying for the treatment of patients, and the burden of a marketing budget and lobbying budget. Medicare's overhead costs amount to less than three percent of every dollar that goes into Medicare.

In contrast, a typical health insurance company would eat up 30 cents for every dollar that goes into it in the form of "administrative costs."

[Common Sense Party]

2. Medicare will win on price, yes, but not on coverage or treatments

Just look at how limited Medicare is on nursing home stays. Need to stay more than 100 days in a nursing home? Too bad. Medicare won't pay any more.

Want intermediate care or custodial care at home? Forget it.

Price and cost are important considerations, yes, but hardly the ONLY ones.

[Selatius]

3. That's because the Repubs cut back Medicare coverage.

In the end, that will have to be addressed, but from the position of having no coverage vs. private coverage or Medicare, most in such a situation would opt for the one without the greed, however flawed Medicare has been made by the Repubs.

[Common Sense Party]

5. Yes, it WOULD have to be addressed, and soon. If Edwards

wants to base his whole health care strategy on Medicare 2, he has to convince the American people that Congress won't be able to nibble and shave and carve away at the coverage, like they did with Medicare 1.

[Selatius]

6. He probably will convince them if he wins the Dem primary.

What you talk about is a risk for all major government reforms and programs instituted since the founding of the country. FDR dealt with the same issues, but that didn't stop him from establishing Social Security, and it's the longest lasting program in American history. Not even Bush succeeded in crippling it.

If Edwards wants to protect it, he might learn a lesson from FDR by making a board of trustees to administer Medicare and give it the power to make the shots as far as covering costs much the same way that the Social Security Board of Trustees administers their system and makes the shots as far as how Social Security runs.

[LSK]

4. that is a common republican trick to attack Govt

They underfund and mismanage things like NCLB or FEMA for example and then claim that Govt is not that answer and only privatizing is the answer. Don't be fooled.

[aquart]

7. God, this sucks.

I don't see how I can live long enough for the insurance companies to die a "slow death."

I love my country. The way you love parents who continually embarrass you.

[LSK]

11. and why exactly would need insurance companies if you enrolled in his plan?

:shrug:

[eridani]

8. Private insurance will screw government insurance every single time

The private insurers will cherry-pick the healthy and continue to steal vast sums from the pool of health care dollars. The government will be stuck with all the sick people and stripped of the funding to actually care for them.

[depakid]

9. Biggest single reason Edwards won't get my vote

The more he crows on about this bullshit- the more he loses credibility.

Plain and simple.

[LSK]

12. why is this bullshit?

Can you try to actually EXPLAIN the flaws of his plan instead of calling it bullshit????

[GeorgeGist]

10. Obviously it isn't a path to what WE all want.

Otherwise there would be nothing to GAIN from " ... a slow death for private insurance companies ...".

Eventually, even noble liars reveal their ignobility.