By Sally Pipes
WASHINGTON, D.C. (Texas Insider Report) — Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden has made protecting ObamaCare a cornerstone of his campaign. He’s cited that position to rebut Republican claims that he’s a socialist in disguise, intent on nationalizing the country’s health insurance system.
But voters shouldn’t be fooled. Biden’s plan for "health reform" will lead to a government takeover of health insurance — just on a different, slower timetable than that desired by Bernie Sanders and the Democrat party’s progressive flank.- Biden wants to lower Medicare’s Eligibility Age from 65 to 60.
- He’s also calling for the creation of a public health insurance option that anyone could purchase through Obamacare’s exchanges.
- An initial version of the "ObamaCare" Affordable Care Act passed by the House included a public option, but the Senate wisely stripped it from the bill before it became law in 2010.
For some low-income people, there’d be no premium or deductible.
The path by which this plan devolves into single-payer health care isn’t hard to see.
For starters, reducing the Medicare eligibility age could put another 23 million people into the program, including more than 18 million people not currently enrolled in government plans.
The "public option" would also have significant financial advantages over private insurance plans. As an organ of the federal government, it wouldn’t have to cover its costs – the Federal Treasury and U.S. Taxpayers could plug any losses.
Second, the "public option" would almost certainly pay providers rates similar to Medicare’s. Those rates are much lower than the rates private insurers pay.
Indeed, Medicare has long under-paid hospitals and doctors. According to a recent report from the American Hospital Association, Medicare pays just 87 cents for every dollar of care the program’s beneficiaries consume.
- In 2018 alone, these underpayments added up to a nearly $57 billion shortfall.
- Health care providers make up for those losses by charging private insurers more.
- In Florida, Tennessee and Alaska, private insurers face rates that are more than 325% greater than Medicare’s.
Armed with those structural cost advantages, the "public option" would be able to underprice private plans.People would understandably flock to the cheaper public plan. Some would be uninsured. But many would drop their private coverage, whether they purchased it on their own or got it from their employer. According to one study, more than 40 million Americans would enroll in the public option during its first year of availability.
That’s bad news for private insurers, of course. But it’s also bad news for health care providers, whose patient mix would now include many more people with low-paying public plans — and fewer with higher-paying private plans.
Providers would likely respond by raising rates for the privately insured patients they still have. Insurers would in turn pass those rate hikes along in the form of higher premiums. More and more privately insured individuals would react by quitting their coverage and opting out of the public plan.
This cycle would repeat until private insurers left the market because there was no one for them to cover.
The public option would be the only option.
The United States would have a single-payer plan, with the government as the lone insurer.
The public option would be the only option.
The United States would have a single-payer plan, with the government as the lone insurer.
In the end, Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders are united behind a radical policy program that would put the Federal Government in charge of an unprecedented share of the U.S. economy – and it would require unprecedented sums of money from U.S. Taxpayers to pay for it.
Joe Biden is promising to “protect” and “build on” President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act commonly known as ObamaCare. But his health care plans would set in motion a process that could lead to the end of the Affordable Care Act — and of private insurance — in this country.
The two men are merely describing this radical vision in different tones of voice... hoping Americans don't and won't catch on.
Sally C. Pipes is President, CEO & Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her opinion pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, Newsweek, The Washington Post, USA Today, Financial Times of London, The Hill, RealClearPolitics, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, U.S. News & World Report, the Boston Globe, and the San Diego Union-Tribune, to name a few. Her latest book is "False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All". Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes.
