Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Cadillac Health Care


As the government attempts once again to reform health care, President Obama made it clear recently that one thing should be included in the new plan. This is the inclusion of an excise tax on high-cost health care plans. The point of this tax is not really to make money for the government (the income would not actually be that great), but rather to make people look for the less expensive, untaxed health care plans. The idea is that when people have these less expensive plans, doctor visits may cost more than what people are used to; this is supposed to make both doctors and patients more conscious about what procedures and tests are done. If health care costs are not covered completely by less expensive insurance, people will think twice before flooding the emergency room with visits. In a way this makes sense, but to me it does not seem like a logical thing to do. The doctors are getting paid basically the same amount (now some of the cost is just out of the patients pocket), so why would they bother to change the examination and testing processes which they already have? I can see why the patient is more conscience of health care, because they are paying more, but the doctors have no incentive to change their practices. In this way, I think that all this tax would do is create more unneeded stress for the patient. I don't really think that a tax needs to be put in place to have patients buy cheaper health care, it just doesn't make sense. The link to the article is here.

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