"The House bill would expand insurance coverage by increasing Medicaid eligibility and delivering tax credits to people earning as much as 400 percent of the poverty level, or about $43,000 a year for an individual. Small businesses and individuals who had trouble buying insurance would be able to shop for plans through new purchasing groups dubbed "exchanges." Individuals who did not purchase insurance by 2013 would face a penalty of 2.5 percent of their income, and employers that did not provide coverage to their workers would be fined as much as 8 percent of their payroll, a provision the CBO estimates would generate $30 billion a year. "
Since we are spending a little talked about fortune on Health care, and this plan is going to cost a small fortune more, perhaps the answer lies at least somewhat in reducing costs?
Making insurance -- let alone mandatory insurance, which is far worse -- an even bigger part of the equation, seems to be quite the opposite. It would seem that at least part of the answer should lie in working towards more direct consumer involvement in their own health care and insurance, and a focus on efficient, catastrophic and other streamlined forms of "protective" rather than "convenience" insurance -- the latter of which has only served to create a fortune costing mountain of paperwork and administrative overhead, and a large fortune in insurance company profits.
It seems that this bill might well be rewarding the big lobbyists, more than anyone.
Perhaps the extremely unethical access that the Washington Post insists that it was not trying to sell, was not even really necessary after all?
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