"Something that they know wouldn't be possible."
Uh...that's the Democrat's plan...isn't it? Heath insurance for everyone? Whether they want it or not...

In other words, they know the jig is up. They want to position themselves to get the best deal they can. They know Obama has a mandate on this.

Mandates are a very bad idea. They want the public option of the health care reform plan to be limited so they can shunt off the sick, elderly, and disabled onto the public option.

It's a terrible plan. Obama campaigned against Hillary's plan because it included mandates.

Regardless of whether mandates are a good or bad thing in a possible health care plan, this is NOT necessarily a good thing. The health care industry is demanding mandates--everyone gets covered so that they don't have to pay the costs of those who choose not to be covered, get sick, and then seek coverage--yet refusing to go along with controlling costs. That is, they still seek to charge those with diagnosed illnesses exorbitant, impossible rates, which pretty much is a killer to any solid health care plan.

The insurance industry is only stating common sense here. If they're forced to cover anybody without it being mandated that everybody HAS to have coverage, then it simply wouldn't work. Here's why - Say I'm a healthy guy and figure I don't need coverage, all of a sudden I find out I have a survivable cancer but know it would ruin me financially so I go get health coverage (that under Obama cannot be refused for pre-existing condition), I pay my premiums like everybody else and luckily I survive and am cleared, at which time I promptly cancel my coverage. So I just have to pay my premiums, the insurance company has to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in health care costs, and then when healthy I cancel.

It would bankrupt the industry.

Mandatory purchase of private insurance is literally nothing short of a massive welfare program for the health insurance industry.

Let's also not forget, as part of this discussion, that the primary function of an insurance company is not "providing coverage" so much as it is the generation of investment capital. Their portfolios are getting dinged along with everyone else's and they want to make it up by dinging us all for more money.

Danger, danger Will Robinson...

This is not Obama's plan, but it was Hillary's. I would say don't trust them. If they are offering then there's a catch, maybe they will offer you your current plan at its true price instead of the gauging that they are giving us today for 2 trips to the doctor a year and you come out of the pocket for any subsequent visits.

Health care today is like buying a car without an engine. We do have a car but we have to pay big time to make it work.

As noted above, I think this is really a preventive strike against a Medicare-for-all public health insurance plan option. That's what the insurance industry doesn't want because a government-run plan will beat them on price, with much lower administrative costs, and on policies because the focus will be on consumers rather than shareholders and profits. With this, they can say, "here, we more than met you halfway, we can cover everyone ourselves, just keep government out of it."

I think having a public health care option is essential to any health care reform legislation being effective, but this battle is what the insurance industry is saving its powder for.

When the insurance industry likes a health care insurance plan, grab your wallets and hang on.

Private insurance currently keeps over 30% of every insurance premium dollar, less than 70% goes to providers. In big "inefficient" government programs, Medicare needs only 2% for administration and the Veteran's Administration just 4%.

Why the HUGE difference? A bunch goes to excessive salaries, profits and "retained reserves". But even more goes to all the bureaucracy and paperwork to screen out people who might cost a lot. That's people with pre-existing conditions, or family histories of disease or genetic risks. In other words, people who might actually get really sick and need insurance. The insurance companies will cover you if they think you won't need it.

The system is fatally flawed. Private insurance companies' main goal, of course, is to make a profit for their investors. Since they don't have to cover everybody, they can pick and choose whom to accept, and can also charge different rates to people based on their risk. That creates a perverse incentive for each company, acting in their own interest, to avoid covering people who may need it the most, leaving those who are caught without a big company plan and get seriously ill to go bankrupt and then their health care costs fall on all taxpayers.

Two of the negative consequences that drive up the cost of the system are: First, the taxpayers are effectively subsidizing the profits of the insurance companies, who get to cherry pick the low risk high profit people to cover and leave the rest to government (all of us). Secondly, each company creates a myriad of rules and paperwork to screen people out or to fight expensive bills, which makes life a nightmare for doctors and hospitals who have to deal with literally thousands of different plans and their rules and paperwork.

That's why the private insurance companies keep so much of the premium dollar to themselves. But all this extra work to create rules and screen people out doesn't add value to society as a whole. Each company doing this individually in their own way, when combined results in a huge morass of rules and paperwork which actually wastes an incredible amount of money (not to mention our time and emotional stress). I'm all for private business when it makes sense and improves society but not when the system perversely rewards companies for adding complexity and cost but not value to the whole.

The solution is to create one set of rules for payments that covers everybody all the time. Doctors, hospitals and other providers would still be private, there would just be one insurance payment system - a single payer system. Many independent economic studies have shown it would save so much that everybody in the country would be covered and we'd have money left over.

Just imagine - your coverage wouldn't be dependent on your job, or your negotiations with an employer. You'd keep your health insurance even if you lost a job or had to close your business due to your illness. Your child would still have health coverage when he or she leaves school. Doctors and other providers could focus on taking care of you, not billing. You wouldn't have to put off going to the doctor or dentist until the pain got so bad (and the condition much harder to treat). A single payer insurance system would know you'd be with them for your lifetime, so would be able to focus on long term savings and preventative care.

Single Payer - The best for you, the best for the economy

For more information:
www.pnhp.org/facts/single_payer_resources.php

What fascinates me here is that the health insurance industry is talking about this as if it's some sort of negotiation. Okay, they say, you can pass your little laws, but only if we get to make demands in return.

Uh, no. That isn't how it works.

Global mandates/Romneycare is a terrible idea and hopefully this terrible idea won't manage to re-infect the Democratic health care plan. I would like to think Hillary Clinton lost for a reason.

Okay, here's a question-- Daschle wrote a book about health care earlier this year, before the primaries really got going, right? What's his position on mandates?