How many of those of you who still have health insurance through you employer would like to give it up in exchange for paying for yourself? Nobody? Well it seems that is what, wait for it, a bi-partisan group of senators have in mind.

Ezra Klein does a good job of summarizing this:

Here's how it would work: The Healthy Americans Act of 2007 would begin by dissolving all employer-based insurance. Instead, it would mandate that every employer who had covered his employees in 2006 convert the total they spent on insurance into salary increases creating, in one day, the single largest pay raise America has ever seen. Now, why would employers go along with that? Well, legislatively they'd have to, but, as Len Nichols explained to me, they'll also want to: Health costs are accelerating, every year costs 10 or so percent more than they ear before. By freezing the total at what employers paid in 2006, Wyden's plan would exempt them from 2007's increase.

Meanwhile, an individual mandate would be implemented, forcing every American to purchase one of the options offered by their state's newly formed Health Help Agency (HHA). The HHA's will have a menu of private insurance plans, all of which must provide coverage equal to or better than the Blue Cross Blue Shield Standard Plan used by Congress. All plans will be community rated by the state, meaning an end to adverse selection and preexisting condition problems. The only acceptable variables for price will be geography, family size, and smoking status. Subsidies will be offered up to 400 percent of the poverty line, will full coverage provided to those below 100 percent. Employers will contribute through a set equation related to business size and yearly profits. There's quite a bit more, but that's the basic outline.

It is like the Massachusetts plan, only much worse. Joe Klein and Willian Galston are hyping it, so clearly the wanker caucus is getting in line.

A part from anything else, it sounds like it would prohibit states from instituting their own single payer plans, so we really would be better off with no deal as opposed to this one.

One last thing, Wyden represents Oregon where the bottom has fallen out of the job market. Lane County Oregon has passed a resolution supporting a single payer system. Oregon Laborers have passed a similar resolution. Senator Merkley is on record for single payer, but is a cosponsor of the health parasites act, so I don't know what is going on, maybe someone from Oregon could ask him.