Kennedy Tries to Outdo His Own Stereotype

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA) has begun to circulate his new health bill, and its going to be a whopping bill for businesses.

Calling the bill, "American Health Choices Act" or AHCA, which is apparently based on NOT giving employer's any choices as it will force employer's to provide health insurance to employees or "face a penalty."

Why is this a bad idea? It is terrible that people don't have insurance, most personal bankruptcies come from medical care, and, let's face it, the medical/health insurance/prescription drug is busted so why not be support a bill that will increase the coverage of working Americans by putting the burden at the hub of working America, the employer?

Mostly because it won't work (more on that later). But also because the one question I've never heard answered well is, "Why?" Sure the job is place where lots of people go, so if you want to cover a lot of people quickly, that's a great place to start. But again, why is it the employer's responsibility? Ostensibly, the employer pays a wage for work. What the employee does with that money is his or her own decision. If there's not enough wage to cover all that the employee needs then the employee is faced with a hard decision, seek a higher wage or make sacrifices. And you know what? The employer faces hard decisions too. No company can do everything they want with the revenue it earns. So it too must face hard decisions. Hard decisions are OK, that's a part of life. Forcing employer's to bear the health-care burden of their employees using the sole logic of "because they're there" is not only wrong its dumb. Kennedy's proposal just hides the cost of the bill. We'll all wind up paying for it in higher prices or lost jobs, but it will be opaque.

Sure, proponents will use the massive profits of the big companies to show that they can afford health care coverage. Unfortunately, those companies already provide heath insurance for their employees. In order to be effective this bill will have to target small businesses, those same small businesses that struggle with payroll and managing cost's to keep prices competitive. Forcing this on small businesses will absolutely kill them. So this bill will never pass unless it exempts small business.

This inherent flaw will not dawn on anyone in the Legislative branch. So this bill will pass with an exemption for small businesses and nothing will change, and the waste goes on.

Since my daddy raised me to never criticize without a solution, here's mine. Rather than fine/jail/sue the employer into solving a problem of the employee, use the sound base fact that lots of people congregate around work. Allow employee's to ban together to get the best price for their health insurance. Then allow multiple work sites to ban together to get even better pricing. Rather than change the law to force employers to foot the bill, change the law to allow people to use the power of bulk shopping to gain affordable access to health insurance.

But again, can our reader out there (Hi Ma) explain why this is a problem for the employer to solve by force of law?