Gov. Tom Corbett's proposal to expand health care coverage by maybe leaving an expansion of Medicaid to private insurers is flawed because private insurers charge more to run health care than the government, the chairman of the state House Democratic Policy Committee said Thursday.
Rep. Mike Sturla, D-96, Lancaster, said Mr. Corbett rejected the idea of setting up a private-sector health insurance exchange under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.
"He didn't want to set up an insurance exchange. He wasn't sure of that. Now he said, "What I really want to do is have all that go through private insurance,'â" Mr. Sturla said during a meeting with the Times-Tribune editorial board.
Medicare, the federal health care system for the elderly and disabled, and Medicaid, the federal health care system for the poor, are among "the most efficiently run operations," Mr. Sturla said.
"Once again, Medicaid and Medicare operate with a 3 percent overhead," he said. "No private insurance operates with a 3 percent overhead. So he's going to take tax dollars and pay somebody to administer something so that they can get 16 percent overhead and there's less dollars left for health care delivery."
Mr. Sturla rejected the notion that the state can get away entirely from a school-funding system that relies on real estate taxes. Proposals to eliminate school real estate taxes generally get hung up on how to replace the tax revenues once real estate taxes are eliminated, but Mr. Sturla said there is another reason the real estate tax system works. Real estate tax revenues fluctuate far less with economic swoons than income and sales taxes, which drop sharply in hard times.
Mr. Sturla said a statewide health insurance system for teachers that could save money is "one of those things that we're looking at," but "the governor has shown no interest in doing this."
He again decried the governor for failing to replace $1 billion in lost federal money, most of which disappeared when President Barack Obama's economic recovery act funds expired. Mr. Corbett, who has slashed education funding overall, could have replaced the lost money with a strong Marcellus Shale tax, by closing a major corporate tax loophole and by not cutting business taxes.
"I can make up a billion dollars five different ways," Mr. Sturla said.
Contact the writer: bkrawczeniuk@timesshamrock.com