In Defense of Blue Cross

Yesterday morning I awoke at 5:15am and got ready for an early shift at work. As I came across the bridge (I believe it was Expressway) I noticed a billboard on the left hand side of the road that was advocating for health care reform. The caption ran something like: "They were denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions" which was accompanied with a picture of a cemetery with blue crosses across it. This ad is so despicable. Do proponents of health care "reform" really believe that private insurance companies want people to die? In their mind, the CEO and claim handlers for Blue Cross sit in their offices and find ways to make people's lives miserable. They sit and plan how to kill those poor people with pre-existing conditions. Yet, they miss the important point that the Blues have to provide insurance for a very large number of people in ND and else where throughout the country. So it is necessary for them to come up with a plan that covers most people and still maintains some aspect of affordability. Covering people with different pre-existing conditions will drastically raise the premiums of healthy policy holders. And let's set something straight: the Blues sell insurance not direct health care. This simple point seems to be missing from discussion on pre-existing conditions. Allowing all pre-existing conditions to be covered by insurance would be like a person taking out fire insurance on his house after it burns to the ground. That makes no sense---either does forcing private insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions.

This leads to the second and ultimate point about private insurance. The bills coming out of Congress right now (even the much hailed "moderate" Baucaus bill) ultimately makes it more expensive for average Americans to have private insurance. Senator Conrad knows that forcing private insurance companies to cover pre-exisiting conditions as well as other procedures will increase the average premium for individuals. By doing this, private insurance will be villafied once again for raising the premiums of its policy holders. This will allow the government to step in and come to the rescue. Every senator knows this and it is disgraceful that they are doing everything they can to put private insurance out of business. And that's what this whole health care debate is about isn't it? It comes down to whether or not you believe that private insurance has a right to exist. It is clear that a majority of those who are writing the health care reform bills in Congress don't want to make it easier for private insurance to insure more people and for individuals to have more control over their health insurance. Here are some examples:

-reform efforts have insisted that private insurance companies pay more in taxes which will just be passed on to consumers

-reofrm efforts have not gone along with Republican efforts to allow individuals to buy insurance across state lines

-reform efforts will not allow individuals to have high deductible, low cost plans. This will force them to buy into high priced policies---see point 1 as to how these will be even more expensive

-an amendment by Jay Rockefeller states that health saving accounts must be eliminated by 2010.

It's all just a load of crap. I personally have a high deductible plan through work. But they also put $75 a month into an HSA for me. This is a plan that works very well for me because I hardly ever go to the doctor. It might not exist a year if the Democrats have their way.