Senator Grassley Doesn't Want You To Have Cheap Health Insurance Because It Would Make it Hard to Find Cheap Health Insurance

According to Radio Iowa, Senator Grassley recently addressed his constituents about health care reform. I'm glad to hear him claim that he is committed to getting health care reform passed this year. Yet, I'm very disappointed that he is determined to make millions of Americans continue to pay too much for health insurance.

At a local forum Grassley referenced a new study by the Lewin Group claiming, “It's quite obvious, if you have 119 million people opt out, you aren't going to have affordable coverage for those that are left in a private health care system”. From his statement I can only conclude Grassley trusts the accuracy of the Lewin Group study and therefore is against allowing Americans to save 30% on their health insurance.

The Lewin Group studies what the effect would be of allowing Americans to choose to buy private health insurance or buy a public option which would be modeled on Medicare. The study concluded that the public plan would provide cheap, low hassle, quality health insurance for a fraction of what private insurance costs. The public plan would be roughly 30% cheaper than a comparable private plan. The “problem”, as Grassley sees it, with the public plan is that it would be such a preferable product that millions of Americans and companies would love to voluntarily switch to it. Grassley is against the public plan because he thinks too many people would like it.

Let's make this very clear: Grassley believes that having public plan based on Medicare would allow Americans to choose an insurance option which would reduce their premiums by 30%. He is against the public plan for the reason that most Americans and companies want to save money and no longer be forced to do business with private health insurance companies. So what he was saying was: he against offering Americans guaranteed affordable, effective health insurance because it could possibly make it harder for Americans to get affordable health care from private insurance companies. Grassley must decide if he wants to help the American people save money or help the health insurance industry protect its profits.