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Originally Posted by FSETH
By the way Krimson, please tell me how if Obama is elected that my health care cost will come down.
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I can answer this one.....
If a large number of people join together and shop for heath care as a group, they will obtain a better price from the health insurance companies than if they each shopped individually or in very small groups. Call it a "volume discount" if you want.
As you may or may not know, government employees have some of the best health care plans out there. My mom worked in the local school district for 20+ years and is now retired, and the health care plan her and my dad have from her pension is way better than what I have as a small business owner, yet it costs much less money than my plan does. And it is not "socialized medicine". It is funded through regular private insurance companies just like everyone else's health plans. But because the State of New York had such a large number of employees, they were able to negotiate a better price and better coverage than a small business or individual could negotiate.
What Obama is proposing to do is to allow individuals to buy into the government health care plan that the Federal government provides for its employees. It's the same plan that members of congress and many other government employees have.
So if you are happy with your current health care plan, then keep your plan. But if you want a better deal, most likely there will be one to be had through the government's plan.
While this clearly keeps the health care system running through private insurance companies, what the health insurance companies fear is that over time this will work its way into a "single payer" system. As more and more people drop their current plans and move over to the government's plan to save money, eventually the end result may be a single large group encompassing the majority of Americans, and they will all be paying a lower rate than before when they each had seperate plans.
This means less revenue for the insurance companies. So they are against the plan for obvious reasons. And in order to try to scare people into not supporting such a plan, they are running a propganda campaign trying to convince Americans that such a move will result in the government telling you what doctors you can go to, or what health care you can have or not have, etc. But this is a far cry from socialized medicine. It is just offering you alternatives to what you currently have -- alternatives that will most likely save you lots of money.