The Most Simple Of Health Care Reform Explanations

From Krugman at NYT:
"...The essence is really quite simple: regulation of insurers, so that they can’t cherry-pick only the healthy, and subsidies, so that all Americans can afford insurance.

Everything else is about making that core work. Individual mandates are a way to prevent gaming of the system by people who don’t sign up until they’re sick; employer mandates a way to hold down the on-budget costs by preventing a rush by employers to drop insurance; the public option a way to create effective competition and hold costs down further.

But what it means for the individual will be that insurers can’t reject you, and if your income is relatively low, the government will help pay your premiums.

That’s it. Any commentator who whines that he just doesn’t understand it is basically saying that he doesn’t want to understand it..."

TW: It is never quite so simple but this encapsulates the big picture fairly well.

And another quick hit from the Economist:
"...The fundamental problem with the private health insurance industry as currently constituted in the United States is that companies can make money by avoiding coverage for people who are likely to get sick, and by denying payment for people when they do get sick. Take those perverse incentives out of the system, and many other problems vanish too."
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/07/community_rating_and_the_commu.cfm