For Currently Insurer DUers: Would You Switch To Public Option?

[stopbush]

Personally, I would love to have my health insurance through the government. I would love to have insurance that I could take with me from job to job. I work in non-profit, and people in my biz are always changing jobs, often because they're forced to do so. Our health insurance is usually crap, mainly because most non-profits have too few employees to qualify for decent group rates (and forget adding family members to a NP health plan. It's astronomical!).

So, here's a poll for the insured. Would you consider switching to a public option?

[Arkana]

1. Not likely.

It would have to offer me something REALLY good as far as prescription drug coverage. Right now, I pay 20 bucks for a bottle of pills each month.

Without insurance that bottle of pills would cost me $100.

So I'd most likely stay with my own plan.

[county worker]

2. I have a high deductible plan which I pay nothing for. I have a health saving account that I pay

into and my employer pays into also. If I don't use the health savings account the money remains in the account until I do need it. I have an extra amount added to my paycheck to cover insurance for my dependents and I have no dependents. My wife has paid health insurance where she works. I am in good health and rarely go to the doctor.

I pay $10 for two perscriptions a month which cost out of pocket over $400.

I will gladly pay more income tax to cover the uninsured but I want to keep my current coverage. I do not want to go into a public plan.

I already pay a great deal of income tax since I have no children and no longer have a mortgage interest deduction. But as I said I am willing to pay more to cover the uninsured but don't fuck with my current plan.

Perhaps if we had more unions more of us would have what I have. I belong to the SEIU.

[SoCalNative]

7. What happens if you lose your job?

then you will have to fork out for those prescriptions every month.

[county worker]

10. My wife would cover me and in a couple of years I will have Medicare

I am not against a public plan. I like the idea that we could have private and public plans. I have always felt that a two teared system is the answer. Back in the 90's a two teared plan would have passed I think.

The biggest stumbling block to health care reform is the idea that everyone should be forced into a single pay system. That will never fly.

[saracat]

3. As long as it was comparable to the feds! paying a fortune right now

Why wouldn't anyone want the public option?
I pay over $700 a mos for Blue Cross and I still pay %65 and %85 for some medicine and those are generics and $6500 copay for some doctors!

[rucky]

4. My family would, but I would stay with my employer's.

It's free for me, but a $600/month buy-in for my wife and daughter.

[elifino]

5. Very happy with my current insurance

Medicare part A and B plus my company retire insurance, access to company clinic and pharmacy. $5.00 copay doctor and $5.oo drugs.

[kenny blankenship]

6. "Our health insurance is usually crap"

I have a bad feeling that the "public option" will be structured so as not to have an "unfair advantage" versus private sector crap. Certainly many people will be looking for ways to make the public option non-competitive. And even the Obama Administration shares the goal of not making a public option that is so attractive that it could ever overshadow private insurance. Intentional crippling in effectiveness will be the price we have to pay to get enough votes for it.

The details are not worked out, even in the House draft. But when you keep seeing things in the design criteria that are put there to ensure that the public option works like the private sector world, you could be forgiven for wondering if it's not being constrained to work like a private sector plan on purpose, so that it will also suck like a private sector plan, and thus pose no threat.

BTW, no doctor will have to accept your public option coverage unless they want to. That's the last item in the summary of the House's public option ideas. Lots of doctors will not take Medicare, so public option folks will be in the same boat. That leads me to fear that they are deliberately going to make the "public option" something nobody in their right mind will want to have to rely on. By itself it practically guarantees that the public option program will function as a dumping ground for people the private sector doesn't want to insure. (And who doesn't the private sector want to insure? People who'll cost them money-sick people! And can you run a self-supporting health insurance program with a base composed exclusively of people who represent liabilities -probable big payouts to providers - fuck no!) The voluntary provider item is a feature that absolutely ought to be changed to create a credible public option, but I think it's safe to say that it will survive to the final bill. Who's going to make them change it? The Senate ? HAH!

[stopbush]

11. There are plenty of doctors who don't take my insurance now, so a zero sum game.

[walkaway]

8. A better question might be, how much longer do you think..

your company will continue to insure you adequately as health care doubles over the next few years.

[leftstreet]

12. No one ever talks about that

Why would employers continue to offer benefits?

:shrug:

[wryter2000]

9. Other

The simple answer is "no" because I get excellent health insurance (and my actual health care) from my employer, a non-profit HMO. I honestly couldn't get any better.

However, as much as I love the company, I'm thoroughly sick of the job and some of the people I work with. Some days, I think I can't take another minute of the bs they shovel. I'm 60. I could retire in (I hope) 2 - 3 years, but I'll lose my health insurance unless I hang on until 65. If there was a public option I could fit into my budget at all, I'd jump at the chance.

A public option could potentially save me 2 - 3 years of misery by allowing me to retire.

[proud patriot]

13. Yes !

I likely will

[Hekate]

14. "Maybe" -- One of the few things still holding Mr. H to his job is our health insurance...

It's good but expensive, and if we ever had to find insurance on our own we would be SOL. We're essentially uninsurable under current circumstances. We have several more years before we are eligible for Medicare.

Even if we ourselves did not jump to change to a public option plan as long as dh is working, I think many on both sides of our family would do so in a heartbeat. They include software consultants, a part-time college instructor, owner-operator of a preschool, martial arts instructor, and so on. All these folks are experiencing the insecurity that comes with having to pay for their own health insurance.

This country desperately needs a government-sponsored health plan that is decoupled from the workplace.

Hekate

[JDPriestly]

15. I'm on Medicare, so in a sense I have the public option. Actually,

I pay a co-pay to be in the Kaiser system. I'm not sure whether that works better or not as well as just straight Medicare because I don't seem to find much information on the straight Medicare option. Never mind. I have the advantage of no exclusions for pre-existing conditions and a good monthly rate with Kaiser. Plus, Kaiser reminds me to come in for routine appointments that I tend to forget about. I need that kind of paternalistic health care. I know -- that's irresponsible. But at least I'm not a hypochondriac who overburdens the health care system with imaginary complaints. I just have too many more interesting things to do than to think about my arthritis.