Insurance Insanity – The Coming Senate Health Care Plan That Will Bankrupt Families

Conservatives Will Get Their Greatest Wish – Pain and Suffering For the Low and Middle Income Folks

In the new version of the Senate health care bill is what will be called the Cruz Plan, named after Texas Senator Ted Cruz but will really be the Cruel Plan.  Briefly, the Cruel Plan will allow insurance companies to offer policies with restricted coverage as long as they offer one policy with all of the Essential Health Care Benefits, that is, the policy everyone needs.

What will  happen is that the full benefit policy will be prohibitively expensive so no one will have full coverage.  The restricted policies, Zombie Policies will be insurance but with coverage so restricted, deductibles and co-pays so high that they will not be insurance at all.  They will be paid for, in many cases in full by the tax credits, so they will be free.  Free of cost and free of benefits.

The result will be a massive lack of coverage for the people who need it the most.  Visits to their doctors will be shocking as they learn they are not covered for what ails them.  Credit card debt for medical treatment will skyrocket and lead to bankruptcies, with the bankrupt suddenly learning that they cannot discharge their credit card debt in bankruptcy.  It will be a conservative dream come true.,

The defense of this policy will be that once individuals have to pay for most of their health care they will lead healthy lives and shop for the best price.  See, in the mind of conservatives people choose to have birth defects, they select cancer, they welcome heart problems and they actively seek to be diabetic because they are covered.  They choose unneeded testing and undergo procedures purely for the joy of waiting hours in an medical office and being subjected to humiliating explorations of their bodies. 

Conservatives also believe that medical care is subject to shopping.  While riding in the ambulance to the ER they could explore the best and cheapest options instead of just lying there and being taken to where the medics think they get the best treatment.

Ultimately these Zombie policies will make their way over to the employer group plans, and for full coverage employees will pay more, a lot more.  Of course with the employer mandate gone many if not most small firms will give up group coverage altogether, putting millions into the Zombie policies for individuals.  And the great thing for conservatives, health care costs will go up substantially, meaning even more of a burden on employers, individuals and everyone except the millionaires. 

What a great plan!!