Never thought I'd get to write that headline. But it's true. The current Chairman of America's Health Insurance Plans is George Halvorson, CEO of Kaiser Permanente. Halvorson also serves on the Commonwealth Fund's Commission on a High Performance Health System, which just released a plan called "The 2020 Vision." You can download the plan here. I did. And I can give it a recommendation I can rarely offer to health reform proposals: The contents surprise.
Page VI: "All members support and endorse the recommendations presented in this report."
I will have to read it first before I can comment, and I look forward to what our friends at Healthcare-Now have to say. My initial reaction is that they are proposing a Jim Crow public health care option, Medicaid, only worse. The doughnut whole of death.
I also think it is possible that the repeated demonstrations in support of single payer are having their effect. They maybe worried that if they insist on everything they will get nothing, eg the administration will give up on working with them and go with a single payer option.
In any case the thing to so is redouble our efforts in support of single payer, both at the state and federal level. Remember our fall back position, nothing in any federal plan can prohibit states from enacting their own single payer systems.
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it's a crappy plan
ok -- but expensive -- if you stay well.
low deductible, good.
moderate copay, good at first glance, but 25% copay on drugs [ruinous if you needed chemo for cancer, for example].
high-ish premium, and very high out-of-pocket maximum. total cost [premiums + o-o-p] would easily run $10,000/yr for a single person if they get truly sick, quite a bit more if you're on the family plan.
that 'nationwide network' sounds like it's going to be an hmo to boot. lovely.
and did you see ezra's update on that post?
oh goody! a public plan that everybody can hate.
the most important thing
is that congress not pass anything that precludes the states from passing their own single payer plans.