Thursday, December 5, 2013

Heritage Foundation offers same old New Health Care Reform Plan.

The authors of the Affordable Care Act, the HeritageFoundation, have another reform idea that gets our Republican government freeloaders off the hook when it comes to helping their constituents get care.

Nothing new, something old: If you really want a confusing and costly “system” of health care, Republicans have just the prescription for you, with a heavy dose of "freedom and liberty." They've decided to combine every bad idea into one big bankrupting plan of action:
After Repeal of Obamacare: Moving to Patient-Centered, Market-Based Health Care: Principle #1: Choose, control, and carry your own health insurance. True health reform should promote personal ownership of health insurance. While Obamacare uses government-run insurance exchanges to limit individual choice, real reforms would focus on encouraging Americans to purchase insurance policies that they can take with them from job to job and into retirement in a competitive, free market.
INTO RETIREMENT? That’s right, the Heritage Foundation is assuming our private plans will stay with us for life, breaking the promise of providing Medicare to seniors. Instead, you'll get a subsidy:
Congress should provide seniors with a generous subsidy to purchase a Medicare plan of their choosing. Seniors who choose a plan costing less than the subsidy would pay less, while seniors who choose a plan costing more than the subsidy would pay the difference in price.
And when those plans premiums go up, year after year, way beyond the subsidy, what happens? 

Getting rid of Employer Coverage: While this is a good idea, Heritage makes it worse by allowing an employer subsidy to their employees. But when that employee is let go, who picks up the employer side subsidy? The person without a job? Sounds costly too.
Rather than providing health insurance directly, employers instead would offer cash contributions to their workers, enabling them to buy the plans of their own choosing. Combined with changes in the tax treatment of health insurance and regulatory improvements to enhance portability, moving to a defined contribution model for health insurance would allow workers to buy a health insurance policy in their youth and take that policy with them from job to job into retirement.
Rights of Conscience. This turns whatever reform Heritage is throwing out there into mush, since “conscience” makes health care voluntary, at the whim of the provider. If you thought insurers were brutal canceling policies, just wait till your employer tells you to take a hike:
Congress should protect the rights of consumers, insurers, employers, and medical personnel to refrain from facilitating, participating in, funding, or providing services contrary to their consciences or the tenets of their religious faith. Enacting these protections would prevent Americans from facing the moral dilemma presented by Obamacare, which has forced individuals, employers, and religious organizations to choose between violating the law and violating their faith or consciences.

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