There are many plans and many counter plans to the health care reform.  I have posted on many of them from Obama himself to the vague plans of the GOP.  But I recently read about a  plan that disturbs me and it comes from a Dem, the brother of Rahm to be exact.  I learned about it from reading an article written by Kate Randall.

Under this plan, every citizen would receive a “health care certificate.” This health care coverage would be portable and permanent, would not be dependent upon employment status or pre-existing conditions and would provide an unspecified range of basic benefits.

The plan would be financed through a dedicated 10 percent Value Added Tax, or VAT, on purchases and services. Emanuel claims such a tax is egalitarian. VAT is, in fact, a highly regressive form of taxation, disproportionately effecting lower-income people. Health care expenditures would be capped according to the amount of revenue raised by the VAT, unless Congress authorized an increase in the VAT rate.

Emanuel also calls for an outright end to employer-based health care provision, which would eliminate any responsibility for businesses to provide medical insurance for their employees. Among unionized workers, health care coverage was won in the course of decades of bitter struggle. Emanuel proposes to scrap these benefits and replace them with his universal plan, providing “standard benefits” across the board.

Under Emanuel’s plan, while everyone will have the same “standard” plan, the wealthy would be able to purchase additional care. He justifies this with the following: “We are used to being able to spend our money on what we want. If we want a fancier car, a smaller, faster computer with more memory, or a luxury vacation, we can pay the extra cost for such things and skimp somewhere else if necessary. The key is that it is our decision.” [10]

He calls this the “choice” aspect of his plan. Needless to say, such freedom to choose is not available to the vast majority of working class families, the unemployed and the poor. In fact, under Obama’s plan, a significant portion of the population will likely choose to pay the penalty for being uninsured—at an estimated average of upwards of $1,000—rather than pay the premiums charged by the private insurance companies, because they cannot afford them.

One of the most insidious features of Emanuel’s plan is the proposal to scrap Medicare, Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). He writes: “Current enrollees will have the option of joining the Guaranteed Healthcare Access Plan. Over a period of about fifteen years, these programs will be phased out.”   His vision of universal health care therefore eliminates the only government administered health care programs.

Emanuel claims that the adoption of an insurance exchange where private insurers offer coverage for purchase—another proposal adopted by Obama—“sets the stage for free enterprise to deliver on its promise that competition will drive quality up while driving prices down.” [13] While private insurers would be required to accept anyone who purchases coverage, there would be no statutory limits on the prices charged for these premiums. Emanuel opposes offering the fig leaf of a “public option” as part of the exchange.

The more I hear of Obama’s ideas and those of his advisors, the more I am starting to believe that all the “public option” stuff was just smoke blown up a gullible public’s ass.  That there was NO intention of a true public option ever considered.

Also the more I hear comning out of Congress the more that only a health plan that is approved by the insurance industry will be passed.  And if that is so, the uninsured are SCREWED!