Today’s Op-Eds: Cost-Sharing; Insurance Transparency Issues; Tea Party Funding
Part Of The Plan: Making It Tough For Private Insurers Las Vegas Review-Journal
[Democrats] crafted a plan that would gradually remove people from private insurance and put them into public and quasi-public systems. Eventually, private health insurers and employers will be so burdened with expensive coverage mandates they won't be able to turn a profit. Medical benefits will go the way of the dinosaurs (10/26).
Cough Up More For Health Benefits The Houston Chronicle
Raises may be small and bonuses a distant memory of better times, but one workplace number isn't frozen: Employees can expect a double-digit percentage increase next year in the cost of health insurance they get through the office (L.M. Sixel, 10/25).
No Good Comes From Repealing Health Care Aurora (Colo.) Sentinel
Conservative lawmakers are hugely mistaken if they believe that the country can take any more of the same when it comes to relentless health-care price hikes and service reductions. Something had to give, and giving the health-care industry a break on malpractice reform wasn't going to cut it. No reform effort in this country will ever be much more than acceptable because Congress doesn't have the courage to nationalize and universalize health insurance (10/26).
Prevention Is The Key To Getting A Handle On Health Care Costs The Sacramento Bee
We need to ensure that the decisions we make about our community are those that promote healthy living; that make it easier for us to do things that promote our health and well-being and difficult to do things that are harmful. This means access to clean air, safe water, fresh fruits and vegetables, environmentally safe buildings, parks, recreation, roads, and education and cultural opportunities (Stephen M. Shortell, 10/26).
Lack Of Transparency In Health Care Markets Costs You Money St. Louis Post Dispatch
It's an article of faith among Republicans that the answer to state-by-state market concentration is to allow insurance to be sold across state lines. They like to point out that there are 1,700 health insurance companies and HMOs around the country. Unfortunately, most of them are subsidiaries of the same handful of huge companies ... that dominate state markets (10/25).
A Call For Specifics The (Batavia, N.Y.) Daily News
The GOP is pointing to Democratic-led initiatives such as the bailout of the financial system, the economic stimulus and the new health care law as examples of excessive spending. Yet in the week that remains before the elections, it would be good for candidates who make this argument to say specifically where they would start cutting (10/26).
Tea Party Inc.: The Big Money and Powerful Elites Behind the Right Wing's Latest Uprising The (Frankfort, Ky.) State Journal
Taken together, Americans for Prosperity, FreedomWorks (another far-right political group seeded by the Kochs) and Murdoch's News Corp, owner of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, form the corporate headquarters of a conglomerate one might call Tea Party, Inc. This is the syndicate that funds the organizing, crafts the messages, and channels the rage of conservative Americans at their falling fortunes into an oppositional force to President Obama and to any government solution to the current economic calamity (Adele M. Stan, 10/26).
Will Health Insurance Become The New Pension? The Chicago Tribune
Employer-provided health-insurance coverage is fairly standard for full-time employees. But retirement pensions used to be fairly standard, too. Then the green-eyeshade folks went to work and now most of us in the private sector are in 401k-style retirement savings plans, and only government workers have pensions awaiting them. [T]he idea in this job market that employers must offer (healthcare coverage) in order to remain competitive doesn't seem persuasive (Eric Zorn, 10/25).