GOP Health Care Plan Lets Patients Choose To Spend Own Money

The Republican Party has a deal for you: Under the health care proposal the GOP released Wednesday, you are fully entitled to spend your own money in the free market to purchase health insurance, a chief backer of the plan, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), said Wednesday.

Under the rubric of choice, the plan treats employer-based health insurance as income and taxes a worker's benefits. If it costs an employer $12,000 to cover your health care, for instance, you'd be responsible to pay taxes on that $12,000 as if it were paid out to you.

To offset the tax, the plan provides a $5,700 tax credit. If a family doesn't have insurance, that money can be used to buy it. But Burr acknowledged that the credit would be far less than the roughly $12,000 cost of health insurance.

"If a family doesn't have health care coverage, has no employer-based health care, they get a $5,700 refundable credit to go out and construct their health care. That probably won't meet the equivalent of an FEHBP plan," Burr told reporters, referring to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan.

Patients then have a choice, said Burr. They can either choose a plan that doesn't cover much and has high deductibles, or they can buy a better one.

"It may be that those individuals who didn't have coverage before now construct a high-risk plan that they can access for $5,700, or construct a higher deductible or a higher co-pay than what they may have wanted to fit within the $5,700 window. Or they can put their own dollars in to raise the benefit level," said Burr.

The plan is called The Patients' Choice Act of 2009.

"This puts Republican ideas in the middle of the fight," said Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.). The employer-based system of health care, he said, is a "relic of the 20th Century." Notably, though, the bill's backers insisted that their package does not encourage in any way the dismantling of that system.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) dubbed it "a health care plan worthy of the party of Abraham Lincoln" and stressed that "not one dime" of federal money would be spent on the GOP plan.

That'll be true regardless, because the backers of the bill don't think it has a realistic chance of getting through a Democratic Congress. "We're not interested in engaging the committee process with this bill," said Burr, calling it "sort of useless" and suggesting that Democrats may be so impressed with the ideas in the plan that they adopt it themselves.

The plan is being pushed by Sens. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) and Burr, and Reps. Ryan and Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). The party released an outline of the proposal earlier Wednesday.

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Comments

[Hardscrapple]

05:23 AM on 06/18/2009

I believe a Single Payer, Medicare-like plan, may not only be the best choice, it may well be the only real choice. It is the only plan that can effect real reductions in the cost of healthcare to allow coverage of everyone. The plan would have to cover all costs of care. No deductibles, no copays.

Most people don't know what they mean by choice, so politicians can talk about it vague terms. Is the choice between adequate and affordable? Between less and lesser? With a comprehensive Single Payer Plan, why would someone chose anything else? Because they want less care? Because they want to pay more?

There will always be the irresponsible who instead of paying for health insurance would chose to spend the money on lottery tickets, booze, cigarettes, or payments on their FWD monster truck. The same people who show up at the ER expecting to be treated. Do we want to facilitate such behavior?

The plan could be financed with a 10% tax payroll tax on both employers and workers. No exceptions. Small businesses don't get a FICA tax waiver because "they can't afford it". It's a cost doing business. Like everything else, if you can meet the cost of doing business, you go out of business to free up the capital for those that can.

[kevinw]

03:38 PM on 06/17/2009

All that hype and they put out a four page plan. Was this an eight grade paper. Their solution is to tax people that have decent care and give uninsured peopel enough money to have them join the ranks of the underinsured.. No recommendations for a standard fee, or coverage of pre-existing conditions.No definition of minimum benefits. So the big change for the Repubs is to tax employee benefits and a small subsidy that would allow you to buy a worthless high risk plan.

These guys are less than worthless. And then they have the balls to say they think the Dems will scarf up their great ideas.

[Jabo22]

09:22 AM on 05/21/2009

The Republicans have several intentions with this plan , which, once again, side with big business.
First, business is tired of paying medial insurance as a benefit, this is obvious, that's why they want to tax it so that employees will "Choose" another plan outside the group plan. Secondly , everything the Republicans do is focused on breaking "group pools", hence Bush's Prescription Drug plan, to remove the "buyers advantage" group pools have.

The Republicans always seem to be providing a solution for something Americans don't see a problem for. Choice? Really? Is that the problem as you see it? How about a plan to cover every American with low cost health care.

If a problem requires a solution that benefits the small guy, you can be assured that any Republican solution is not designed to solve the little mans problem.

[Jezreel]

03:01 AM on 05/21/2009

The "new" GOP health care plan is exactly the same as the old McCain health care plan. Was it intended as a joke?

[ncmom54]

12:53 AM on 05/21/2009

Richard, our state now has 10.8 unemployment... and those folks WILL be voting in 2010.

[unite4change]

12:50 AM on 05/21/2009

Let's give the GOP credit, they always side with big business.

[Sensiblebg]

12:06 AM on 05/21/2009

Im confused. The liberals want a national healthcare plan for those 'who cant afford it'. Isn't that what Medicaid is already used for?

[Sensiblebg]

12:08 AM on 05/21/2009

Or Medicare..

[timewaster2dcore]

12:49 AM on 05/21/2009

So you think that when somebody is sick and can't afford it, he or she should just waste away, right? Good for you, Mr Pro-life! Concerning Medicare and Medicaid, they are expensive. But the one being proposed, if it's a single payer system, would reduce cost because a lot of people are covered.

[proggirl]

11:33 PM on 05/20/2009

I presume that some of these Repugs are part of the Christian conservative movement. Odd how the only place they apply Darwin's work is in their social policies.

[exile]

10:54 PM on 05/20/2009

WTF

of course elected republican politicans want you to go get your own health coverage.
then employers won't have to spend a dollar to cover you the WORKER.

it's kinda weird how the further republicans push the regular ol' working people into poverty, no health care, no paid time off, and what's next republicans coming out against paid vacations.

of course they have fought against the common person going to college.

maybe socialism...
after decades of republicans making the poor poorer, making jobs disappear off shore, making tax revenue vaporize off shore...
is a better system than the capitalism system so many have been completely screwed under.

[faicole]

10:52 PM on 05/20/2009

Maybe I'm a little dense....how does this plan help? If you can't afford health insurance - and let's admit most of us can't - you get a "tax credit" (of course!) of $5700. If a person makes so little as to be among the working poor (the poorest can get Medicaid), what are the chances that they are gonna take $5700 and buy health care? I'm thinking they would probably buy something more pressing: housing, food, utilities, maybe a car.....This is like education vouchers. Not enough to help, just enough to realize how damn bad off you are. But what the heck, if we all had benefit Senator Burr, that would just be unAmerican. Socialist even!

[Tahut]

01:37 AM on 05/21/2009

It taxes the worker instead of the employer if they select the benefit. It allows the employer to low-ball coverage. It forces people to make hard choices between coverage they need and coverage they can afford. It's a win-win business to repuglian legislation package.

[2garen]

10:34 PM on 05/20/2009

let me see a family can not afford health care insurance they want to give them a credit . What that means if you do not have 5700 cash then it is nothing from nothing equals nothing, GOP math!

[Tahut]

01:40 AM on 05/21/2009

I suspect you have to have an active policy in order to get the rebate. And if you cancel the policy later, you'll owe the government a portion of said monies back.

[MNJim]

10:21 PM on 05/20/2009

This resembles the plan they had for privatizing Social Security. Just look how much better off we would all be today if we would have turned our SS funds over to Wall Street 5 years ago!

[IntExec]

10:14 PM on 05/20/2009

Wow, talk about disconnected. They are farther away from reality than I thought. That, or dumber than rocks. BTW -- the difference between offering the federal plan as an option and what the Europeans have is very stark. In Europe the MD's are essentially government employees. Here we are talking about the administration of the Fed plan. OH... and we had two kids in the States and two in Europe -- no difference in care, except in the US there was a slew of nurses and doctors. And this thing about waiting in lines for care is greatly exaggerated and, in any case, must be compared to having no care until it is an emergency.

[c2morow]

10:12 PM on 05/20/2009

Great plan. They choose to "construct a higher deductible"? They can barely afford the plan in the first place, but now have to pay out a huge deductible just to afford a cheaper plan, so they are right back in the same situation they were in before... unaffordable healthcare.

[Tahut]

01:47 AM on 05/21/2009

I got the same impression. You're paying so much in monthly premiums there isn't enough left over to pay for the doctor's bill. That's what's called being insurance poor. You have medical coverage, but can't afford to go see a doctor when sick or injured because you don't have enough disposable income left to pay the deductible in advance. And if you do pay the bill, then either the auto loan, apartment rent or home payment has to be skipped which puts you in a whole lot of other troubles.

[Rog49Thomas]

09:47 PM on 05/20/2009

And that is the beauty of the plan.

If citizens can pick their own poison, think how the number of uninsured and poor will decline.

That's not only the free market at work, but as well It's either empathy or sociopathy - I can't remember which is the Republican virtue.

[Tahut]

01:48 AM on 05/21/2009

Kewl ! I didn't know sociopathy was a repuglican virtue. Thanks for the clue!