Romney’s basic plan for health care: give tax breaks to people so they can purchase their own individual plans and try to entice businesses away from offering coverage to their employees.

That’s a plan? First, most people, including myself, would not be able to afford health insurance without getting it through an employer. This is the only way we can actually afford it. That had better be one massive individual tax incentive because as Stephen Andrew points out, of the people who won’t be turned down for coverage because of some underlying medical condition, most of them cannot afford the going rate for insurance  in any case, especially given what they already have to pay in mortgages, car payments, eating expenses, utility bills, etc. And insurance for people with some kind of condition would be financially out of reach in this scenario. This prospect scares the shit out of Andrew, and I would have to concur.

In Andrew’s words:

This has been the goal for many corporate conservatives for a long time. Divorce healthcare from employers, throw you out there on your own, save money for the stockholders. Romney and others seem to think that can be done by offering a fat tax cut on your gads of disposable income, so that you can offset the cost of an individual policy.

What planet are these jokers living on? Putting aside the idea that a tax cut doesn’t do almost half the population a lick of good, there are no affordable health insurance policies for a fifty year-old guy like me available on the private market. None, nada, zilch. Check for yourself, go out and get a quote on an individual policy for a fifty year-old with minor preexisting conditions and an autoimmune disease with similar deducts, Rx, and copays. Go ahead, I’ll wait right here for you freedom loving libertarians to find and link a plan with a major or at least half-ass reputable company comparable to the employer based one I have now with CIGNA. …

The rest of you already know the math don’t you? Now try it for someone in their 40s who’s had breast cancer, or 58 years old with diabetes, or a young 22-year-old with a congenital heart defect. Those policies either do not exist or they are exorbitantly priced. Few people in the 99% will be to afford one, for themselves let alone their family, with or without a Tax Cut. If this is Romney’s plan, it is a fucking death sentence for millions of Americans, it will certainly cost is way more money at best, probably come with increased suffering and debt for individual and government eventually, and that all probably includes me.

Insurance, of course, isn’t the only concern: after one renders a hefty sum to Caesar for insurance, there is also potential medical bills, high drug costs and doctor visits, all of which are still egregiously high after insurance pays its share. The health care wormhole runs deep in this nation, I’m afraid, and it will only go deeper under GOP leadership.

This is what scares the hell out of me about Romney et al | The Zingularity.