perhaps this is a better stump
Single Payer: The Plan Not on the Table
http://
seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/
16084
The public plan option is a sham. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the premiums will actually be higher than premiums in the private sector, and fewer than 2 percent of Americans will enroll. So the public plan option will be an expensive, tax-funded subsidy to private health insurance, because the public plan option will take the sickest patients off their hands. It won't expand coverage or decrease costs.
The plan is an insurance industry bailout. Most provisions to expand coverage don't even go into effect until 2013, after which it still leaves at least 17 million Americans uninsured.
Private insurers get millions of mandatory new customers and about $600 billion in taxpayer subsidies.
It forgoes over $400 billion annually in potential savings on overhead and bureaucracy in the health system enough to cover all 47 million uninsured.
It makes private health insurance mandatory for middle-income working people, forcing them to buy a defective product. It will become a federal crime to be uninsured, with a penalty of 2.5 percent of income, starting in 2013. Since the plan institutionalizes different levels of benefits and allows for skimpy plans (e.g. "bronze"), the mandated insurance may not even cover their health needs.
We will have a nation of underinsured families and businesses who will be paying money they can hardly afford for health plans that will never meet their needs.
Individuals and families with incomes up to 400 percent of poverty ($73,240 for a family of 3) are eligible for skimpy subsidies to buy coverage through a new "insurance exchange." Families of very modest means (200-400 percent of poverty) are still responsible for paying an unaffordable 8-12 percent of their income towards health insurance premiums.
The plan bans denials of coverage based on pre-existing conditions (starting in 2013) and recissions (retro-active cancellation of coverage) immediately. But insurers are still allowed to deny claims.
Similarly, caps on out-of-pocket expenses (at $5,000 for individuals and $10,000 for families) don't prevent medical bankruptcy because they don't include expenses for uncovered services.
Insurers are supposed to spend 85 percent of premiums on care, but insurers are able to circumvent this rule easily by categorizing administrative expenses as "clinical" or "quality improvement."
