UPDATE: Robert Reich addresses minimum standards for health insurance in language less colorful than Pierce’s. (Read him if you’re not in the mood for Pierce.)
So the president, in the interest of finding a “middle ground” on his health-care that is approximately as real as are the Elvish lands, has decided to allow people to keep their moth-eaten, useless — but cheap! — health-care coverage for a year. This, of course, is meant to “head off” a general stampede by the Democratic chickenshit caucus…
Obama delivered a message to Americans who have complained about receiving cancellation notices: “I heard you loud and clear.” He continued: “Already people who have plans that predate the Affordable Care Act can keep those plans if they haven’t changed. That was already in the law. Today we’re going to extend that principle both to people whose plans have changed since the law took effect and people who bought plans since the law took effect.”
Translation From The Presidential Weaselspeak: OK, keep that lemon of a plan you’re so fond of, but please, shut yer gob about it now. Also, pray that you don’t need any medical procedure more complicated than a Band Aid for the next year, because that’s all you’re covered for. But… cheap! [Note: See here for more on “junk insurance”.]
There are two fundamental dynamics at play here. The first is that, by and large, on this issue, the general public has evinced a fairly lethal combination of stupidity, timidity, and laziness. There’s more than enough evidence that most people didn’t background themselves sufficiently on their options, and that therefore they were easily scared by Big Scary Letters from the insurance companies, and that therefore they decided it was easier to keep their Get-Sick-And-Die plans than shop around for better ones. None of these were helped by the botched website, but they were all very basic to the subsequent panic over If-You-Like-Your-Plan-Keep-It, which is what scared all the Democrats into bailing out.
The second, and most critically important, of the two fundamental dynamics is the simple fact that it is virtually impossible to craft a public-private partnership on health-care as long as health-care is considered a profit-making enterprise…The one gigantic mistake the administration made, and it was a mistake that the administration could not avoid making, since anything resembling single-payer was off the board immediately, was to believe somehow that the health-insurance companies would not behave like the greed-slick buzzards that they’ve always been, that they could be bribed with millions of new customers into cooperating for the public good, rather than to increase their private profits. Silly administration. And, because of these two fundamental dynamics, we get brilliant public policy analysis like this.
Obama offers his proposal amid growing warnings from Democrats that without a fix, they might be forced to support the Republican proposal scheduled for a vote Friday. The measure, sponsored by Rep. Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, would let insurers continue to offer sub-standard plans through 2014. Many House Democrats, nervous about the political fallout over the ACA’s botched rollout, said this week that without a fix from the White House, they might have to support the Upton measure. At a meeting Wednesday, House Democrats reportedly “upbraided” administration officials for the political problems created by Obama’s pledge that people could keep their insurance. “I want to find out what they are wanting to do,” Rep Ron Barber, an Arizona Democrat, said Wednesday, NBC reported. “If they can do something that makes sense and can fix the problem then that’s one thing, but if they can’t clearly the Upton bill can be an option for me.”
A measure to allow people to keep substandard health-care plans through 2014 is considered a viable option by members of the party of the people.
Has there ever been a federal law specifically designed to protect substandard anything? This is an entirely new area for deregulation. I await with eagerness the E. Coli Protection Act and the Bring Back the Exploding Corvair Act of 2014. Because, you know, freedom.