LindaR, keep driving that point home. Please!

I suppose that my main concern is the fact that the minute you assume that health care delivery falls within a ‘biz model’, you’ve shot yourself in the foot at the outset.

But I agree that there has to be a lot of attention to how it actually works. As for costs, if this was thought out well enough, then it would create a lot of jobs. IMHO, we don’t pay enough recreation people, nutritionists, or others related to ‘wellness’, and we need a lot more jobs focused on helping people exercise, eat reasonably, and feel better.

Imagine if there were daily yoga or aerobics classes at local fire stations or schools around this nation — people could drop in for free on their way to or from work, and chat on the way in to class. You’d be paying part-timers to offer fitness in a simple, effective way that more people could benefit from — and the cumulative benefits would add up over time.

If you get your ‘ticket’ punched 3 or more times/week, then why not get a modest reduction on your health care costs? (Yes, there could be problems with ‘cheating’ but those are solvable.)

Not all jobs created have to be ‘family jobs’, more part-time jobs would fit a lot of lifestyles and make communities more cohesive.

Instead, we’ve limited the concept of ‘health care’ to basically the processes involved in negotiating prices for physician services, meds, and hospital services. That’s still a ’sickness model’, not a wellness model. And it’s locked into a market system, which is good for ’shareholders’ but doesn’t improve overall public health.

IMHO, health care doesn’t fit a market model anyway, but evidently the heads in the Senate would explode over that much economic clarity. Since that’s where we are, you’d at least hope they can get their heads around the concept of breaking up monopolies.

Great point.

But, I don’t think it will actually bring in 50 million, and second, whoever it does bring in will also be a good dose of higher cost/higher risk people. And, if that brought down costs and premiums without any option, that doesn’t jive with the reasoning behind needing the option.

So, I think it will make it go up without any option around. And, these things always turn out worse than expected.

The second point I get from your post is the drift that this is a very complicated thing. Which is why I say the big idea has been discussed and talked about for a long time, but these details, mechanisms and logistics have not really been discussed and vetted at all. Or very little. And each Rube Goldberg proposal (Yes, I am exaggerating there, I more mean a hint of Rube Goldberg) ends up with pitfalls when exposed to a lot of informed eyes.

I think it can be done, but it really needs careful thinking and then vetting to expose and correct weaknesses–such as the Max Tax.