Please Antiquetracman, there are a lot of variations on this theme and we shouldn’t generalize. There’s no question but that President Obama mis-spoke when he said “if you like your plan you can keep it” but many people who had substandard plans were perfectly happy simply because they hadn’t encountered the limitations yet. I’ve worked with AIDS patients whose policies had a lifetime cap of $100K, which didn’t last long with repeated hospitalization. Treating women with HIV, the first opportunistic infection was vaginal cadidiasis, but that’s endemic, and the insurers called it a pre-existing condition and refused to pay for treatment. In spite of these and related abuses, people were happy with their policies until they encountered problems, and so they are legitimately upset when they are asked to pay for policies that provide fair coverage. As for the free ride — we were paying for the poorest people anyway, just less efficiently. I do wish there were more opportunities to discuss the problems of healthcare financing than in the comments of a comic strip. Maybe Brewster can resolve this — he has a nice, simple mind.
Please Antiquetracman, there are a lot of variations on this theme and we shouldn’t generalize. There’s no question but that President Obama mis-spoke when he said “if you like your plan you can keep it” but many people who had substandard plans were perfectly happy simply because they hadn’t encountered the limitations yet. I’ve worked with AIDS patients whose policies had a lifetime cap of $100K, which didn’t last long with repeated hospitalization. Treating women with HIV, the first opportunistic infection was vaginal cadidiasis, but that’s endemic, and the insurers called it a pre-existing condition and refused to pay for treatment. In spite of these and related abuses, people were happy with their policies until they encountered problems, and so they are legitimately upset when they are asked to pay for policies that provide fair coverage. As for the free ride — we were paying for the poorest people anyway, just less efficiently. I do wish there were more opportunities to discuss the problems of healthcare financing than in the comments of a comic strip. Maybe Brewster can resolve this — he has a nice, simple mind.