Last week, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush put forward a health care proposal as part of his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination. The plan, which has many moving parts, is intended as a replacement for the Affordable Care Act. If you don’t anticipate getting sick, you might like it.
Instead of health care exchanges and mandated insurance, Bush’s plan would provide tax credits for buying catastrophic coverage. This means the government would pick up a substantial share of the cost of a plan that has a large deductible, with the insurance kicking in only after a person had paid close to $7,000 out of his or her own pocket, or $13,000 for a couple.
At the same time, the Bush plan would eliminate the requirement that insurers disregard pre-existing conditions.
Under the ACA, a person with cancer or diabetes can sign up for insurance and pay the same premium as a healthy person of the same age. While the Bush plan does include some protections, it does not guarantee coverage at an affordable price. In this respect, the Bush plan is quite explicitly designed to shift costs from the more healthy to the less healthy.
The goal of the ACA is to get everyone into a common pool and share the costs, regardless of whether we have good fortune in terms of our health. It doesn’t do this perfectly, because there are still choices on coverage levels—consumers who choose gold plans are in a different pool from those who choose silver plans, and so forth—but this is its general direction.
The Bush plan would take the country in the opposite direction, making it much easier for healthy people to avoid paying the cost of treating the ill. For the full article click here
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