Patient Power

Michael Bennet: “free preventive care for everyone”! Not.

Writes Vince Carroll in the Denver Post:

If the Senate health care bill becomes law, your preventive care will become “free.” … We have the word of Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet that the bill guarantees “free preventive care for everyone.” …

What the senator actually meant, of course — and would eventually get around to explaining in the speech — is that the bill mandates preventive care “without co-payments.”

Meaning you won’t pay for preventive care directly. You’ll pay for it indirectly through higher premiums, higher co-pays for other services or higher taxes and greater national debt.

As a consumer, of course, you may well like the idea of preventive care with no co-payments. And you might be willing to pay more for such coverage or to trade such a benefit for more cost-sharing for other treatments. (Given the choice, I wouldn’t, but to each his own). However, unless you believe that “free” preventive care is the only sensible approach to insurance coverage — which it clearly isn’t — why would you applaud Congress mandating it for every policy in the land?

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