A Compromise on Health Care

[cnoocy]

Apparently there's talk about compromise on the health care bill, including on the public option. So here's what I think would be a reasonable compromise:

If a privately insured person dies after having a claim denied or being dropped from their insurance, the entire chain of people involved with the decision, especially the set of executives who make the company policies, is charged with murder. After all, if the private system works so well, then a jury should agree that the company acted morally.

"But that's unfair!" some might say. "A private company can't be expected to shoulder that kind of risk!"

What's that you're saying? The public option does make sense?

This is aimed at the world at large, not at my friends list.

Comments

[kamamamama.livejournal.com]

I was just discussing this with someone over lunch. I am extremely disappointed in the direction this is taking. This American Life has a great segment this week called Restrictions May Apply, highlighting one of the problems with health insurance, recission. When I was in Atlanta for May/June one of the fundamentally ignorant things I heard from some people was that anyone can buy insurance independently so there is no need for health care reform.

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

I just don't think people get that it's a problem because they never see the issues until it's too late.

Right now, I have great health care. I'm insured through my employer; my husband's coverage is done through his employer, and my daughter rides along with him. Our monthly outgo is something like $140/month for health care. However, we never see that this money is missing because it comes directly out of our paycheck. All three of us are healthy and like the doctors that we're allowed to see.

However, if my husband loses his insurance, we then have to put everyone on my insurance policy, and our health care costs jump to something like $400/month. If one of us gets really really sick, the health insurance company that covers us punishes the company (by raising the rates because their risk assessment changes) and then starts trying to figure out how to not pay for our claims. They do this because this is their job.

If I'm lucky to keep my health care after a horrific accident or illness, I might run up against the lifetime maximum coverage and become ineligible for care for the rest of my life. Both my husband and I could lose our jobs and suddenly have no coverage at all. My company could decide that 10% (and more) rate hikes is too much to swallow each year. It's all far more precarious than it seems.

I want a single-payer health care system with supplemental insurance offered for those who want it. I want HMOs, PPOs and POSs to go the way of the dodo, because health care insurance driven by profit motivators is fundamentally dangerous to my health, and I want my politicians to stop dicking around and give us something useful.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

The problem with your compromise is that (a) it's not clear that the insurance company's decision was a relevant factor in the person's death—and yes, a murder trial would clear that up, but murder trials aren't exactly trivial and not the best way to test out a hypothesis; and conversely (b) there are plenty of cases where the privately insured person doesn't die, and yet the company who dropped or denied their claim still has a whole lot to answer for.

[cnoocy]

The idea is not so much to cause justice to be done in all cases as it is to make the consequences for failure really high, so that the people who currently destroy lives for the sake of company profits have a personal stake in their actions. I don't claim this as the ideal health care system. I'm just putting it forward as an example of what could be reasonable in the absence of a public option.