Tuesday, March 25, 2008

If you have Medicaid, it's OK to cut your benefits

The Supreme Court has ruled that if your employer wants to provide less health insurance because you have Medicaid - well, sucks to be you then.

I understand the thinking - if your already have health care of some sort, why should your business give you the same coverage as your coworkers (whom we can assume are all hearty and hale).

I'd be OK with this - only we know that seniors are already at higher risk. So we're saying "Look, just use the taxpayer dollars - we can now give you less as a company because I know it's being taken care of by everybody else."

If we lived in a country where there was complete health coverage, this would be fine. But we don't - we live in a country with insurance companies that make more money by denying claims, where health care costs are rising. So we're telling our seniors "That money we set aside for tax dollars to supplement your insurance or provide when you have none at all? Yeah - better hope that works out for you."

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