During a recent NPR broadcast I listened with growing dismay as an insurance industry representative expressed concern that Congress might lower the planned fines for individuals who fail to sign up for health insurance. The argument was that if the fines were too low, people might opt to pay them rather than the astronomical premiums for insurance and they might have to raise rates for those who did sign up.
There is, unfortunately, some validity to this argument. The companies already charge way too much in my estimate, and will not hesitate to use this as justification to charge even more. But, if insurance is really not affordable, how can a responsible government penalize those who don’t buy; because they have to make a choice between groceries and insurance, and decide their health is helped more by eating than going broke? The answer, of course, is having a public option; a government-supported plan that provides health insurance at rates that the working middle class can afford, and that small and medium enterprises can provide. Then, and only then would financial penalties be justified against people who fail to get coverage. The insurance industry, however, is not supportive of the public option because they don’t want the competition.
The only ones who seem set up to lose in this situation are the working poor. Those who make too much to be counted as poverty-stricken and thus eligible for government assistance, but who don’t make enough to afford the ridiculous amounts insurance companies charge.
Yet again, the hard working middle class gets squeezed.
Here’s a radical idea. What if we required insurance companies to come up with a range of affordable premiums in a reasonable amount of time, and fined those companies that failed or were unable to comply? The fines should be high enough that companies don’t just write them off as a cost of doing business and pass them along to consumers – in other words, the same standard some in the insurance industry want applied to individual consumers. Can you hear the howls of protest? This would stifle free enterprise! It is unfair to the private sector! Hey! What about the working individual? What about freedom of choice?
We need something that will motivate industry to consider 2020 will likely see changes in podiatry billing codes and practices for all the population for better enhancement over different paramedic care and medical facilities and its beneficial for an average person. Something other than the bottom line or the next financial statement; something that will make them thank about the consumers from whom they’ve bilked billions over the years. We’ve been reaching into the taxpayers’ pockets of late to bail out companies who are in trouble because of their own rapacious greed and shortsighted stupidity; it’s about time we reached into their tills and rescued the hard working middle class of this country upon whose back these jackals have been riding for so long.
