Car insurance

Illinois Review: My Health Care Reform Plan

by Ghost of John Brown

President Obama used his address to Congress recently, to essentially say very little new, slam Republicans and entrap a good conservative into yelling "lie" (which was the truth).

As a lead up to the speech, President Obama spoke to an AFL-CIO group in Ohio  and jabbed the Republicans with "what are you going to do".  He said that the opponents of his health care reform want to do nothing, and are protecting insurance companies and just want to bankrupt people, we want to see more people die, etc., etc., etc..  Obviously, the President hasn't seen some of the plans that Republicans want to push forward.  You can read about what the Republicans have put forward here , here , and discussion of THIRTY-FIVE PLANS that the GOP have come up with here .

OK Mr. President.  I'll take the bait.  You say that the opponents of your health care plan have no solutions of their own?  I'll give you my plan.  Look below the fold for an outline.

One of the main problems with the President's plan is that he made lots and lots of promises of better coverage, no pre-existing conditions, and no risk for consumers without any recognition of market forces.  Business is essentially a series of risk-reward calculations.   Insurance, is the ultimate risk-reward proposition.  Actuaries spend their lifetime running through statistics and calculations determining the impact of providing a certain level of coverage to a certain group of individuals.  They do this primarily to determine the appropriate cost to cover a certain level of insurance coverage.  If the President wants to load up covering this and that and requiring insurance companies to take 100% of the liability of coverage, then by the concept of risk-reward, the cost of that insurance will go up.  This is in stark contrast with the stated purpose of making sure that everyone has affordable coverage.  If the goal is to provide affordable coverage, then the stated strategy is completely contrary.

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