During debate on the passage of the High Risk Pool (H 265), the authors of the bill continuously referred to the 1.4 million North Carolinians who are uninsured, when the bill itself, will do very little to make a dent in that number.
The High Risk Pool is designed more for the uninsurable. There’s a big difference between those two words.
Well, it turns out that supporters of universal coverage (I’m using the generic term here because they haven’t figured out whether they like government must-carry laws or single payer yet), see the High Risk Pool as the first step in a delineated march to universal care.
Rep. Verla Insko (D-Orange) laid out the plan at a press conference on Wednesday trumpeting the passage of the High Risk Pool. According to her, the steps towards universal coverage are:
1. High Risk Pool – done
2. Cover all children – Introduced (H 1476)
3. Cover their parents
4. Cover everyone else
The magic number she says is 10%. If they can incrementally get the number of uninsured down to under 10% through government programs, they can "easily" cover the rest either through a Mitt-care style system or some other universal coverage scheme.
Notice there’s not one word said about eliminating coverage mandates and letting individuals shop for the plan that best fits their needs. Who needs that silliness when government can just either tell people to buy it themselves or pay for it for them?
That’s their playbook. Get ready.
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