1. People who have health coverage through their employer generally have pretty good coverage (with some exceptions because there are some cheap plans out there that don't do much).
2. People who have Medicare have good coverage, even exceptional.
3. People who have Medicaid have fairly good coverage, though not as good as these others in some respects (we like to tightly regulate the poor in this country, you know, and stigmatize them whenever we can).
4. People who have individual coverage are the most vulnerable. They are subject to the most volatility in pricing, to pre-existing condition write-outs, to having their coverage dropped, etc. In general, it's safe to say that this individual market is pretty much of a mess.
When I look at this, here's what I see. The portion of health care that is most regulated or "controlled" by the government delivers the clearly best and most reliable care. Employer coverage is tightly regulated; and the government is the single payer on Medicare and Medicaid. All of those programs do a good job of making sure people are taken care, get good care, and have penty of choice.
The portion of care that is the absolute worst is the one where the market is "free" and the most unfettered--and that is the individual market. In some states, the individual markets are more tightly regulated and sometimes not to the good, because there are no purchase mandates (NY for example). But other markets, like California, are very loosely regulated. The individual markets are pretty much disasters everywhere.
I fail to see the insidiousness of government control or regulation. I for one would hate to see my employer plan go into unregulated territory where the companies could arbitrarily decide to deny my wife coverage for the pre-existing condition of cancer. And based on their behavior when left to their own devices, that is pretty much of what I would expect of them.
The rhetoric behind this whole debate has been ridiculous, from the death panels to the bogus notion of government takeover. If everyone insists on calling it a takeover, fine. It sure looks better than what we have.
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