The Transition Away from Employer-Based Healthcare...

[Junkdrawer]

I think that the biggest long-term goal (and everything about this bill is long-term) is this:

How to move to a system where individuals are responsible for buying health care coverage without demands for Government-Based Healthcare.

The process didn't begin with this bill. Most employees already pay a hefty portion of their healthcare costs now. But the fear was that, as companies shifted more of the burden to employees, more and more employees would choose to drop coverage - especially the young, healthy employees. Hence the Mandates.

But the fear for Democrats has to be this: Will corporations take the inevitable "Obamacare" frenzy as an opportunity to accelerate the transition and blame it on Democrats?

[Xenotime]

1. Employer based HC is just so flawed.

[rug]

2. Individiuals should be responsible for paving the roads in front of their house too.

[Junkdrawer]

3. The easy way anything for the collective good is labeled "socialist"...

and then dismissed is probably the biggest flaw in the American psyche. It allows us to be isolated and then manipulated.

[Leopolds Ghost]

12. I live in a "very liberal town where the amount any one person pay prop tax is routinely trotted out

To justify, say, getting their road shoveled out (but leaving the sidewalk blocked with snow because "10 people complained about the roads for every one about the sidewalks, so we are suspending the mandate that individuals clear their sidewalks of snow so we can dump debris from the roads, suspending pedestrian accessibility throughout the city.")

Or even people (the city is like 2% Republican, so it's not them) write letters and go to civic meetings to say that people who don't pay prop tax shouldn't be able to vote, or get less of a vote (not kidding).

Lot of highly paid Dem policymakers in my town.

[inna]

4. Oh, absolutely. It's about shifting to "individual responsibility".

Did you see this thread?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x7935517#7935606

[Junkdrawer]

5. Yes I did. But I think that employers will be less likely to immediately drop....

coverage and much more likely to offer junk coverage - junk coverage that they would force employees to subsidize.

Imagine the backlash if/when that happens.

[Locrian]

6. exactly - the road to serfdom n/t

[Statistical]

7. Employer based healthcare *SHOULD* end.

It is so utterfly unfair and flawed even for those with health insurance.

Pay into system for decades, then lose your job, cobra runs out, and next week find out wife has cancer.

My preferable system would be single payer. However the backup plan would work like this:

a) A insurance exchange with a strong public option
b) a phased in system in which employers lose tax-break for health insurance benefits and gradually over 5 year period are forced to divest from health insurance benefits and transfer the cost as increased salary to employees.
c) everyone selects private personal plan (from single risk pool) off the exchange (including public option).
d) subsidies are available based on income (sliding scale) to purchase insurance from exchange

Employers paying a portion of health insurance simply hides the cost. $50K job + $5K in health insurance benefits costs the employer exactly the same as $55K in salary.

Once again my #1 choice would be the simplicity and fairness of single payer. If that can't happen a system in which health insurance is purchased by individual (like auto insurance) and not coupled with employment would be far preferable to our current horrible system.

[mmonk]

8. Yes. They will push harder their "consumer friendly" policies.

Lower cost high deductable plans.

[W_HAMILTON]

9. I don't want employer-based healthcare insurance.

I have that now. I have a job I hate. I am going back to college to better myself so I can drop that job like a bad habit. If not for the health insurance, I would have probably already quit by now. I hate being restricted in my employment due to whether or not they provide healthcare insurance. I want to be responsible for my own healthcare insurance. I would happily pay more in premiums for the portability of healthcare insurance that is not tied to a job that I despise.

[Statistical]

10. +1. Another example of why Employer based system is broken.

Two simple things could be done to transition from employer based system to individual system.

1) single risk pool. Everyone in a state is in same risk pool. Insurance companies can offer whatever premiums they want but it is the same premium for every single person in that state. If individual at GE( one of largest employers) is $385 a month for X level of coverage than a private inidivudal can get plan for $385 a month.

2) Phase out (over 5 years) employer tax-break on health insurance. Allow individual to deduct full value (like corporations do now) of heatlh insurance.

Within 5 years most employers would simply offer higher salary and let employees pick their own coverage.

Add to that a robust public option, subsidies for lower income individuals and you would have more transparency and portability.

[Junkdrawer]

11. In 2013 you can quit your job and enter the Insurance Exchange....

FAR more debatable is whether you can keep your job, refuse employer coverage, and then enter the Exchange.