It would be political suicide for any member of the GOP to vote for this garbage.

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The $5000 amount is only for individual market which is about 5% of health insurance market and in particular that segment of the individual market that makes over $100K.  CBO claims for 80% of health insurance market (large group) the Republican plan will only save 0-3%  over current premiums. Individual market premiums would be lowered 5-8% under Republican plan, according to the CBO.  You also need to remember that Democrats are planning to subsidize premiums (using the 5.4% tax on those with over $500K year income) so  an average family (income ~$66K) would probably save at least $3700/year with the Democratic plan compared to the non-subsidized Republican plan. Also CBO claims Republicans will cover 3 million additional uninsured, and reduce deficit $68 billion over 10 years. Democrats will cover 36 million additional uninsured, and reduce deficit $104 billion over 10 years according CBO. 

A lot of information, but my wife and I run a small business and buy individual health insurance so I care about this issue. In the last 10 years our premiums have doubled, even as we have reduced our benefits to stay insured.  Last year our premiums went up 27%. I think within 2 years we will pay more for health insurance than we do for federal/state and local taxes combined. When we are 60 the cost of our health care premiums will exceed our current annual income.   I don't love the Democratic plan, but I want the Republicans to be serious about health care reform and come up with a realistic plan that will save me and the average family money instead of playing political games.

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"Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA,) the Vice-Chair of the House Republican Conference just told me in a blogger conference call that not one single Republican is expected to vote for the proposed Democratic healthcare reform legislation expected to be voted on by Congress this weekend."

Nothing like being part of the healthcare crisis solution.

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Thank you, Ms. McMorris Rodgers, for protecting your constituents from the corrupt Marxists who control the Democrat Party.  Too bad we in Western Washington cannot expect the same from our representatives.  Norm Dicks lied through his teeth to the folks attending his Port Townsend Town Hall.  

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Ernie - are you in Washington state? If so, I'd encourage you to take a look at the plan I've got through Group Health. It's an HSA elligible "catastrophic only" plan (I put that in quotes because it actually includes quite a bit of preventative care), $2000k deductible, max $5100 out of pocket, 10% copay for in-network care, $2 mil lifetime benefit that replenishes at a rate of $5k per year in subsequent years when no claims are filed. I'm 34, a non-smoker, paying $82 a month for this. I don't have the prices for the plan in later years handy, but I do remember that they top out somewhere around $270 at present.

I'm not selling insurance here, just mentioning an alternative that is available, but I also brought it up because these are the details I gave in phone messages I've left with Murray and Cantwell this morning. My guess is that when the DNC says "qualified health insurance," that won't include mine, so the premium I'm paying for this awesome coverage is either going to go up significantly when they lard it up with nonsense coverages to make it "qualified," or it will just go away entirely. In either case, by the wording of what went through the House on Saturday, I would be forced into the public "option."

My message to Murray and Cantwell is simple: don't harm your constituents. We've got excellent insurance solutions in this state. Those two represent us, not the DNC, and not people in other parts of the nation. A vote for this monstrosity is a vote against the people of Washington State. Murray and Cantwell need to remember that, and I will be reminding them of it daily.

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Actually there is nothing in the bill that would force you to take part in the public option, if you were even eligable to do so.

Further, the purpose of the bill would actually help you, as insurers would be unable to drop your coverage if you got sick, could not deny covering a pre-existing condition, etc. Furthermore, it would help those around you by providing coverage to those who don't have coverage, doing so might I add through the private sector.

This will also benefit you, becuase you will no longer be paying for those who don't have health insurance yet are forced to seek emergency care at hospitals, which everyone who has healthcare is already paying for.

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Anonymous,

Nothing you've just described helps me, but infact will cause irreperable harm that the private insurance industry will not be able to survive, which will be a net harm to me. What you've just described is a series of open-ended obligations on insurers that make it impossible to calculate benefits versus premiums, as there things must be cast against actuarial tables with all variables defined (even some that can only be projected, such as investment returns) so that a price for a policy can be derived. The $82 I presently pay for the $2 million of health insurance I have, and all of the other particular characteristics of my plan, are based on finite variables, not arbitrary ones and certainly not unlimited ones. All of the "you must take all comers" mandates, the demands that lifetime benefits not be capped, etc., render this impossible. If price cannot be accurately determined, the best that can be done is to guess, and those guesses can only correctly be assumed to be in the direction of higher premiums. At the very least, it is simply a fact that forcing private insurers to cover people they otherwise would not will raise premiums, not leave them level, and certainly not lower them.

The constant mantra of "insurers drop the sick" is absolute nonsense. What I have with my insurance company is a contract, and if they do not honor this contract, there is no shortage of ravenous lawyers in this country who would cut off one of their own arms for the chance to beat an insurance company over their head with it. My contract has a known limit: $2 million dollars. If that runs out, I am not being "dropped," the contract has been honored in full. To the extent that others experience this, it can only be fairly described as the same thing, but I suspect that such tales in truth involve folks trying to get their insurers to pay for things not agreed to in the contract. That is not being "dropped," it is a failure on the part of the insured to understand what he or she owns.

The bill in question does force participation in the public option. It contains provisions that require that a person do so upon any changes to their private policy (and this is assuming it is ever deemed "qualified" in the first place). The promise that we can keep what we have if we like it is a lie; we can keep it only to the extent that legislative boobytraps built into this bill allow a particular private policy to continue.

As I said, I stand to be injured by this bill, should it become law, as will millions of people across this nation, and the harm is not for anything any of us have done wrong. That is the epitome of injustice.

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