Boston Globe Columnist Calls For Eliminating Private Health Insurance

Comrade Robert Kuttner says:

Schwarzenegger's plan, at least, would levy a more serious charge on employers who fail to provide insurance -- 4 percent of payroll. But the whole approach remains a big subsidy to the insurance industry, just like President Bush's privatized Medicare drug program.

A better alternative was recently proposed by Yale professor Jacob Hacker and the Economic Policy Institute. Employers would either have to provide good insurance or pay a tax of 6 percent of payroll. People without insurance could buy into a public program much like Medicare, on a sliding scale. That same program would enroll people whose employers elected to pay the tax instead of providing insurance.

Hacker estimates about half of all Americans would soon be in the universal pool. Over time, the superior efficiencies of the public program would attract more people. The private health insurance industry, as a superfluous and inefficient middleman, would dwindle. Eventually there would be universal and public coverage without the fragmentation.

Comrade Kuttner wants you to forget about Medicaid fraud which is much greater than private sector inefficiencies.