The Myth of the ‘Moderate’ Public Option. The Biden and Buttigieg plans would bust federal budgets, hurt patient care and gut private insurers.

Wall Street Journal ^ | January 23, 2020 | Lanhee J. Chen

[karpov]

Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg and Mike Bloomberg claim they’re proposing a moderate, less disruptive approach to health-care reform when they advocate a public option—a government policy offered as an alternative to private health insurance—in lieu of Medicare for All. Don’t believe it. My research finds that such proposals would increase the federal deficit dramatically and destabilize the market for private health insurance, threatening health-care quality and choice.

While estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and other analysts have concluded that a public option-style proposal would reduce federal deficits, those effects are predicated on two flawed assumptions: first, that the government will negotiate hospital and provider reimbursement rates similar to Medicare’s fee schedules and far below what private insurers pay; second, that the government would charge “actuarially fair premiums,” which cover 100% of provided benefits and administrative costs.

History demonstrates we should be skeptical of cost estimates that rely on such assumptions. Political pressure upended similar financing assumptions in Medicare Part B only two years after the entitlement’s creation. The Johnson administration in 1968 and then Congress in 1972 had to intervene to shield seniors from premium increases. Objections from health-care providers to low reimbursement rates have regularly led to federal spending increases in Medicare and Medicaid. The result isn’t hard to fathom. If premiums can’t rise to cover program costs, or reimbursement rates are raised to ensure access to a reasonable number of providers, who’ll pay? Taxpayers, who were promised a self-sufficient government program.

With Hoover Institution research fellows Tom Church and Daniel L. Heil and support from the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future, I estimated the fiscal and tax implications of creating a federally administered public option.

[SkyDancer]

And destroy our Republic.

[keving]

Good all Butt and Plugs

[proxy_user]

It would depend on how much they charged.

Currently Medicare part B is $140 a month for retirees. So if the government offered the same to deal to all, it would be $560 a month for a family of four. But they’d all need Part B supplemental, which would be at least another $500 a month, plus a drug plan at $100 a month, plus dental and vision.

[wiley]

One way or another, the costs have to be paid. The problem with all gov’t programs is that they introduce inefficient bureaucracies that end up costing more. Socialists know this - they just don’t care. Their answer is to tax the rich. That never works either, but the other part of being a Socialist is having neither intelligence nor a soul.

[nwrep]

“Whose healthcare platform is least disruptive” is not going to be the dispositive question in this election. It is far bigger than that.

[Truthoverpower]

Bigger picture

Demoncraps just want to keep talking about healthcare. Forever

It’s a banal boring subject with lots of talking points.

Bottom line. DONT depend on doctors or the system for your health

[bitt]

p