FIVE ARTICLE SUMMARY:You may have heard the ads running on your local radio station by “A Healthy Virginia Works” (AHVW), a project of a coalition of various business organizations and hospitals, touting a so-called market based solution.
They claim they want to reform Healthcare in Virginia in five areas: Increasing Access to Health Care, Reducing Costs for Patients, Controlling Costs for Businesses, Keeping Our Hospitals Strong and Reclaiming Our Federal Tax Dollars.Sounds great and very conservative or libertarian right? Well yes on the surface it does, but if you read on further beyond the talking points its not.
So, I will look at their five claims point by point using the information from their website in a series of five articles.
** Make sure you read the not very limited government, articles the AHVW promoted on their Facebook and/or Twitter Below **
Part Three
AHVW Point Three:
Controlling Costs for Businesses – Virginia businesses pay an extra $240 each year for every employee covered by their health insurance plan to subsidize the treatment of uninsured patients at our hospitals. Closing the "coverage gap" through the Medicaid 'Private Option' will reduce the cost of employee health premiums for businesses by $20 million every year.My Counter Point:
Again, as I said in my article Part One and Two, this sounds nice and rosy until you truly look at what AHVW means by closing the “coverage gap”, and how they mean to “stop businesses from spending $240 each year per employee by subsidizing those “like myself’ who fall into the “coverage gap”.
What the AHVW advocates is not TRUE free market solutions, but just giving taxpayer monies to business, never stopping the cycle. This means expanding Medicaid in Virginia to get rid of the “coverage gap” and insuring the 200,000 uninsured, while cleverly and deceptively using the language of reclaiming and getting back Virginia’s money already sent to Washington and earmarked for Medicaid. This thing they keep referring to as the “Medicaid private option” is only a “private option” as far as it gives to our tax dollars sent to Washington to “private” business only after DC sends us back a small fraction of what we sent them.
Sounding like a broken record, while we should try and get back as much money that we Virginian’s have already sent to Washington, it has unintended consequences doing it this way. It doesn’t stop the cycle of Virginians and Americans from being over taxed, and then having to beg for 25 cents back from every dollar sent to Washington. This is madness and continues a failed and immoral cycle of government stealing the wages of a man’s labor and giving it to others for free, instead of doing commonsense things that bring down the cost using REAL free market solutions.
Instead lets pass real reform by allowing people to buy cafeteria plans, buy plans across state lines, buying Healthcare Savings Plans or making laws to stop price gouging and collusion in the industry or many other truly market based solutions.
Full disclosure, form what I have researched and understand I fall into the “coverage gap”, but this isn’t about me. Its about principle, fairness and doing the right thing.
Articles that “A Healthy Virginia Works” have posted on their Facebook and/or Twitter:
- I title this article: “A Big Government Democrat and Big Government Republican Team Up” - Read Article
- I call this article: “So-called Republican Elected Officials Caving in on their Conservative Principles to for Perceived Political Gain” - Read Article
- I call this article: “Virginia General Assembly Republicans Caving Again - This Time Not on Taxes (read here), but on Medicaid Expansion in Guise of Pro-Market Healthcare Solution” - Read Article
- I call this article: “Virginia Republicans FAIL in their Duty to Scale Back Big Government in their Districts” - Read Article
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