The reading level for this article is All Levels
One of the most challenging things about our current, employer-run healthcare system is that individuals who have recently lost their jobs, when unemployed, often find themselves without respectable healthcare of any kind. Many people have said, “will I be able to afford Cobra insurance, Obama, if previous employer going out of business?â€
Until recently, costs have been very high for the newly unemployed, as the full cost of individual health care suddenly becomes visible to people. However, the solutions to this problem have not yet been fully elucidated. Many Americans are, in fact, pulling in separate directions. On the left is a very strong pull towards social healthcare, that being a single-payer system. Whether this is to be implemented through a development of a new public option, or through the expansion of medicare remains unclear. On the right is another consideration, which is for a free-market approach; remove the regulations that prevent insurance companies from competing with each other, offer the same tax incentives for all care as with group care, and remove many of the existing social health systems.
What has been undergone recently has been an interesting mix of both. Individual mandates have been put in place to keep down some of the social costs of health care, and the insurance companies have become regulated into keeping certain costs much lower. There have also been plans that have been put in place to help the unemployed when necessary, however it will be a few years before we see how this all pans out. So the next time you ask ““will I be able to afford Cobra insurance, Obama, if previous employer going out of business?†we will have to wait and see what happens when the legislation becomes manifest.
