Welcome to the Chamber Alliance for Health Reform blog.
We'll periodically update friends and members on the activities of our coalition as we fight for
comprehensive healthcare reform that will rein in the cost of healthcare, improve quality, and expand access.
What we don't support:
We are concerned that many in Washington want to create a new government plan option that would undermine the real goals of reform.
As envisioned in many proposals, a new government health plan that is modeled after the Medicare program would “compete” with private plans. The federal government would determine benefits, premiums, and payment to healthcare providers.
Congress should reject proposals to create a new government plan, which would unravel the existing employer-based system where more than 160 million people currently get their coverage.
A new government plan option is unnecessary to achieve comprehensive reform and would lead to serious negative consequences for millions of Americans. A government program would:
Result in millions of people losing their employment provided coverage. The government plan would exacerbate current cost-shifting that already inflates employer family coverage by nearly $1800 a year. Expanding these underpayments to a new public program would cause private premiums to skyrocket—making the government plan the only affordable option.
The Lewin Group estimates that more than 130 million people would be shifted into a government plan almost immediately because the government would use Medicare payment rates that are 20 to 30 percent below private payment rates.
Create an expensive, unnecessary new entity that would be a huge diversion from the needed goals of health reform: expanding coverage and reining in costs.
Likely to be very expensive and require large federal subsidies because of adverse selection (e.g. the employer groups most likely to enroll in a government plan are those with much higher than average medical costs).
CAHR is committed to enacting meaningful healthcare reforms that work for everyone and Congress should oppose a government plan option as it would likely result in consumers losing the coverage they have and thwart efforts to reform our delivery system.
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