Big vote on the crappy House health care bill today, and they’ll apparently be struggling to get it passed. Not really sure how I feel about that. Somewhat ambivalent, I guess, ‘cuz I’m not sure that the House bill (which is probably better than whatever the assholes in the Senate will come up with) is better than nothing. Oh, it’ll be touted as a big defeat for Obama and a huge victory for teabaggers (and teabaggees) everywhere, so, I guess in that respect alone, I have to hope the bill passes in the House today. As for it passing on the merits of the bill itself? Not so much. <\/p>\n
As I understand it, if your job offers health insurance – no matter how crappy and expensive – you’ll be forced to buy it or get fined 2.5% of your annual income. The only way you’d be able to get a government run insurance plan would be if you can’t get insurance on the job. An example of how wonderful this would be, is for Wal-Mart employees. According to this site<\/a>, the average full time Wal-Mart “associate” earns $2,000 less than the Federal Poverty limit for a family of four. As for Wal-Mart’s employee health plan:<\/p>\n * If an average full-time Wal-Mart employee chooses the least expensive family coverage plan, they would have to spend over 20% of their income before the health insurance provided any reimbursement.[ EBRI Issue Brief October 2007] <\/p>\n * An average full time Wal-Mart Associate faces a serious family health issue. They have to pay the entire out-of-pocket maximum for the least expensive health plan, which adds up to pay 53% of their income. [ EBRI Issue Brief October 2007] <\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, a Wal-Mart employee would quite likely be better off getting fined 2.5%, rather than get health insurance. Unless they got sick, that is. In which case, they’d be screwed either way, really. <\/p>\n Now, there are subsidies for the poorest families and all that, and I don’t know all the details of the bill (I doubt many people do), and I don’t know how it’s gonna work if you’re part time vs. full time or whatever, but I think it’s pretty fair to say the bill sucks. At the very least anybody<\/em><\/strong> ought to have the option of electing to go with the government plan. In fact, that ought to be the deal – take your company’s plan, or you’re automatically enrolled in the public one. <\/p>\n But, no, that’s not good for the insurance industry. They can keep raising rates, and you have to pay, unless you’d rather get fined and roll the dice and go without coverage.<\/p>\n