$2500 for an individual or $5000 per family for a year? This is laughable. $2500 is not much more than my wife and I pay per month for health insurance, not to mention the humungous deductible and copayment; and ours is considered decent insurance.
This is no health care plan at all but, as you say, a gravy train for the insurance industry. As a doctor, this will probably make my job harder because, the more "economical" the plan, the more hoops doctors and hospitals have to jump through to get treatment modalities approved. These piddly tax credits will, no doubt, result in the proliferation of bare-bones, super-saver plans that will require prior authorization for every pill a patient takes while offering very limited coverage.
This, in turn, will require more administrative time on the part of the doctor (the doc is frequently the one who has to fill out the forms or sit on hold with the pharmacy management company) and his or her office and less time for patient care.
And the uninsured are still out of luck, as tax credits do nothing for those who pay no taxes. This part of Ryan's "Roadmap" and what he proposes for Social Security, I believe, show how out of touch his wing is with what it means to be poor.
Ray Bender, MD
Mequon
