10/12/2009

New Fox News piece: Baucus Bill Encourages Americans to DROP Insurance Coverage

My new piece starts this way:

What if you, and every member of your family, had the chance to save $4,000 each?. Would you be interested? Under the terms of what's being called "the Baucus bill" -- Washington-speak for the bill the Senate Finance Committee will vote on tomorrow -- that is how much you could save by dropping your health insurance.

People might have thought that health care reform would lead to an increase in the number of people getting health insurance coverage. Indeed, the Congressional Budget Office claims the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill will reduce the number of uninsured in 2019 by about 29 million," but the financial rewards are huge for people if they drop their insurance. Amazingly the CBO makes this prediction of 29 million more insured Americans without ever once analyzing the financial incentive for those who are already insured to drop their insurance.

Consider some numbers. . . .

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2 Comments:

Blogger Tony said...

Dear John:

Thank you, thank you for the fine piece published by Fox News today.

You inspired me to dig up the direct phone number to the Senate Finance Committee.

While I may only be a small voice out of the darkness of the back home constituency, Senator Kerry will hear me roar.

I published a link to your piece that appears on Fox in a BLOG that I was inspired to start a few weeks ago. www.ostrichfallacy.blogspot.com

I am now an activist who is on the watch for government actions that appear to have little, if any, deductive reasoning applied to their genesis.

This activist blogger is grateful to have access to your clear thinking and fine writing. Be assured you have a new fan in the Boston area.

10/12/2009 10:59 PM  
Blogger Kevin said...

That is a bit extremist don't you think? I can't go out and pick up a plan and drop it that easily, there are contracts involved. That's why there's open enrollment at only certain points of the year. I'm sure there will continue to be restrictions on wheny ou can drop and pick up insurance. The big wigs at the insurance companies won't let people just pick it up and drop it. If your theory is to come true, there would have to be a ton of people doing it to unravel the insurance industry.

Maybe it's different where you live, but if I decided to drop my insurance, I couldn't jsut go pick up a plan when I am sick. 1) I can't afford to budget that. I wouldn't keep an extra pocket of say, 400 dolalrs in my bank account in case I got sick and had to buy insurance. 2) There are regulations right now that say I can't pick up insurance until open enrollment.

Also, I didn't see anywhere in the bill where it tell Americans to drop insurance, but I know that's just picking on the details and there had to be an attention grabbing headline.

10/15/2009 11:52 AM  

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