Better Health Care Through Advertising

by digby

In case you were wondering what the Republicans plan to do about the health care crisis, their most creative idea is to make every American comparison shop. (We do love shopping…) Apparently, they are under the impression that the thing that upsets people about the health care in this country is the fact that they don’t “own” their own policy, their employer does.

But that’s not all. They have other ideas too. Like their suggestion that health insurance companies should spend lots of money to advertise their services on TV. I’m not kidding:

Every night on television there are dozens of commercials from Geico, Progressive, Allstate and other companies offering us better auto insurance at lower costs. But there are virtually no commercials for health insurance. This is because the federal government protects health insurance companies from real competition. Insurers don’t have to market to consumers. They only have to satisfy employers.

The insurance companies aren’t spending enough on administration costs, they need to be spending billions on advertising too. Because that’s what happens in a “free market” (which is something like a church only without the singing.)

Read the whole article to see how they’ve taken the rhetoric developed by the reformers to sell their incoherent plan as an obvious fix that shouldn’t require more than a couple of minor tax breaks. They admit that it’s probably wrong to discriminate against sick people, and they acknowledge that the insurance companies are reaping unfair benefits from the status quo. But their answer is for everyone to give even more money to the insurance industry, at least partially so they can afford the necessary huge new expense of television advertising. Then just a few tweaks with some expensive high risk pools and federal deregulation et voila, everyone gets to own their own unaffordable, low coverage health insurance policy without either the government or their employer standing between the patient and his insurance company bureaucrat.

See how easy that was?

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