Posted by
grad_1986 on Tuesday, August 11, 2009 9:39:30 PM
Government is a expert player at what I call "The Waiting Game". Simply put, any time government wishes to take over a part of our society it merely has to put into place a system by which over time other competitors are drained slowly out of business until they are the last one standing. It can do this only because its rules are different from the rules played by private companies.
For example
Lets compare the difference between CIGNA and the Obama-Care plan.
Payers
With CIGNA, people who opt for the coverage pay premiums (and co-pays) along with their employers to gain coverage so they have skin in the game. But the Obama-care plan gets it money from OTHER people (not the ones using the service), so they have NO skin in the game. In fact, if needed, those people (taxed on their health-care benefits) will get taxed MORE if more money is needed to cover Obama-Care. Also as more people go on the Obama-care plan, the HIGHER the tax burden will be on those with prvate health insurance. Eventually a "critical mass" will be hit where those people will be so over taxed they have no choice but to move to Obama-care as well. That's the way always is when you have people RECEIVING a benefit paid for by those NOT RECEIVING the benefit. There comes a tipping-point where there is not enough people paying into the system as those taking out (just look at Social Security).
To put it another way, lets say 70% of America pays for the other 30%. If the 70% pays an extra $5,000 per year in taxes to cover the 30%, what happens when half of the 70% leaves and joins the 30%. You now have 35% paying for the other 65%. If the costs of covering those additional 35% don't change, the 35% left holding the bag will see their taxes go up to $22,000 per year to cover the ones recieving the care. That is just not sustainable and the ones remaining will have no choice but to join the others as well.
Also, CIGNA has no ability to make other health-insurance plans MORE expensive to make theirs look LESS expensive. But the Government can very easily make all the other insurance providers much more "expensive" by simply racheting up the taxes on the prvate insurers. No other company can do that and it puts the governement on unfare footing.
Providers
With CIGNA, they work closely with medical providers (such as doctors and hospitals) to insure that
- Payments to providers are acceptable to both parties
- The payment system (paperwork) is streamlined so that providers are reimbursed on a timely basis and with minimal hassels
If either of these 2 are not met, doctors and hospitals can opt to drop CIGNA from their accepted plans list as its not worth it to them to carry them anymore. This of course would force CIGNA to get with the program and fix their problems and make things better again.
For the Obama care, the governement does not have to work with the providers to may sure the payments are "fair" as they will be REQUIRED to take the Obama-Care plan. There is no opt-out for them. The payments are whatever government decides and the system can be as muddied as it needs to be. The government can always add more workers on their side as necessary and print more money to cover those costs. CIGNA can't do that. Therefore the doctors office has only one solution for their problem: drop the other providers to give more resource to handling the Obama-care system. Let's say a doctors office has 3 workers for handling the variety of heathcare companies. Obama-care comes along paying much less than the other providers, the doctor cannot afford to hire more help to support the Obama-care system. Instead they will need to move resources from other providers to haldle the Obama-care paperwork. Eventually, as the Obama-care becomes more and more convoluted it will need more and more workers and in the end cause most healthcare providers to drop their other plans. Not because THEY are so BAD, but because the government plan is so HORRIBLE!
To accelerate the process of taking over all of healthcare all they only have to do is:
- Increase taxes on the private healthcare users which will accelerate the numbers of people being thrown onto the Obama system as it will be "cheaper" than private health-care (also maybe make sweetheart deals with large corporations that they will get more of the governments business if they drop their employee healthcare benefits)
- Increase the paperwork and decrease the payments to healthcare providers to force them to drop other plans in order to stay above water as that will be their only choice.
Then just sit back an WAIT and WAIT and WAIT.
As Obama said, "It may take 10, 15 or 20 years. But we will get there"