I’m on record as being generally supportive of Health Care Reform and while I am still undecided on the current bill I do see many good aspects. I also support the concept of a mandate requiring everyone to have some basic health insurance coverage.
However on Friday I was listening to a radio show while driving to the office and someone did raise an interesting point regarding the details of the mandate as contained in the current bill.
As I’ve said, a mandate is fine, but for me it should be very simple, requiring that you have coverage but leaving the decision of what plan to get in the your hands.
If you want to spend a lot on premiums to get a lower deductible and co pay, then pay the higher premiums. If you’d prefer a lower premium at the expense of a higher deductible and co pays, that is your choice.
This is where I have a concern with the current bill, which seems to require a level of coverage well above that of a basic plan.
To be fair, the caller to the radio show was an opponent of HCR but he made some good points. His son is a self employed businessman in his 30’s who makes a decent but far from lavish living. The caller didn’t want to get too specific but made it clear that his son’s income was under $ 50,000 a year. For the sake of debate we’ll call him Bob.
Even for a single person that is a relatively modest income, especially if you consider that 25-35% probably goes out in various taxes (income, SS, Medicare, etc). That is a net income in the low to mid 30’s. Again, nice but hardly rich.
Bob had a basic plan but was concerned about the proposed costs he’d have to pay under the HCR mandate. According to caller the projected cost for a single person was somewhere around $ 5,000 a year and that seems to match what the CBO has put out. The son said he was currently paying less than half of that for his basic plan.
I did some checking on the net to see how accurate that was and it does seem to work out. If the link doesn’t work I assumed a Sacramento CA zip code and an age of 35 (since Bob was in his 30’s).
I got quotes as low as $ 70 per month with plenty of plans in the $ 100 to $ 200 per month range. Obviously these plans have higher co pays and deductibles but many were fairly low (all under $ 5k, some as low as $ 1k).
So for $ 150 a month he’s paying $ 1,800 or so a year.
If the numbers from CBO were correct for him, he would see his premiums nearly triple under the plan.
Since he’s single and middle class he might not qualify for much assistance.
Now of course it is entirely possible that the CBO numbers wouldn’t apply to him. Obviously they are an average and include older or less healthy individuals.
But if I were a member of Congress I’d sure want to have some assurances that people like Bob do not get stuck with such hikes. Requiring coverage for all is an acceptable idea, requiring that they buy a specific level of coverage or a specific type of plan seems to go too far.