Health insurance in really big packages

It seems that Costco, in addition to selling 48-roll packs of toilet paper, is now going to start selling health insurance.

Costco will offer family and individual coverage to its customers who pay $100 a year for "executive" membership, company officials said. The insurance is aimed at people such as contractors, waiters and students who are self-employed or cannot sign up for plans at work.

It is slightly less ironic that Costco would do this than, say, Walmart, since Costco actually provides health care and living wages for their employees, but it is still a sign of a disfunctional health care system that people need to get their health insurance where they get their cheap underwear.

It's equally crazy that Chris Daly and others have to push for a regressive tax to pay for health care for uninsured folks in San Francisco. It is especially sad that they have to push for a sales tax increase rather than a tax that would fall primarily on people who could afford it because "it is easier to pass as there is no "built-in" opposition, even though sales taxes generally impact lower-income people more than those with more money." But it is a crisis. as our own Robert Haaland says,

"Thirty percent of people that use emergency rooms get turned away because of overcrowding and understaffing. If you ask for an appointment tomorrow at a public health clinic, you would have to wait five months," Haaland said. "Our health care system is hemorrhaging."

Unfortunately, the city on its own cannot replace a broken health care system. All this tax will be able to do is knock that waiting time down to a couple of months, probably, when even a week is too long. Health care, I increasingly believe is the looming issue of this decade. At some point we will either have to join the rest of the industrialized world (like Canada!), and provide health care to everyone, or see increasing parts of our population suffer from a gutted public health system.