According to an article in the Indianapolis Star by Daniel Lee, a spokesperson for WellPoint says that health care reform shouldn’t focus on health insurers. Their bureaucracy, profits, advertising, and lobbying expenses apparently aren’t fat that needs to be cut out of the system. Rather, we should trust health insurer’s promises that really this time they are pretty much fixing things on their own.
Abdul had some pretty good coverage on this one. He reports that the WellPoint spokesperson said that “individuals with pre-existing conditions can be pooled with other high risk customers.” It would be like an insurance ghetto for sick people!
She complains about the sort of competition that would be in place if there was a public option. The problem right now is that the incentives are not in place for insurance companies to compete to see who can provide the best coverage for the lowest premiums to the most people. Rather, the incentive is to see who can cherry pick the most healthy people, deny the most claims, and avoid the most “medical loss” (i.e. actually paying for health care with premium dollars received). The medical insurance industry has zero credibility at this time. Their operations are opaque, their bureaucracy is byzantine, and their track record is horrible.
What does ‘control costs’ mean? This an issue rarely broached in a broad discussion,unless you tune into NPR type programming.That should be discussed on a ‘we present/you decide’ type approach.I have heard conservative types state that all we need to do is tort reform and the costs of healthcare would be greatly controlled.I don’t doubt that,but for what good? This ideology has us believe that ‘The lawyers’ are the main problem… But it seems to me TR would primarily enhance insurance companies,because that’s where the direct savings would be focused. How do we know how much savings would trickle down to the consumer/patients /doctors? Not much if not spelled out by appropriate regulation.
Controlling insurance premiums without jeopardizing,but hopefully enhancing health care benefits, should be the goal of any reform. If anyone gets screwed let it be insurance companies first;they could lose a lot and still be way ahead in the profit game..But that’s just my biased opinion but I do seem to understand issues as well as many who are giving analysis on TV and radio and blogs..
Re: tort reform. I think if you compare legal defense, settlement, and judgment payouts for medical providers to premiums over the past 20 years, you’ll find that the former has remained relatively flat while the latter has jumped enormously. I don’t think there is a strong correlation between the two.
Tort reform? There are already caps in place. People don’t hear about the appeals and the reduced or overturned awards so insurers claim lawsuits/awards are driving them to the poorhouse — which we all know is not true by looking at their executives’ pay. Those in the medical field as well as in insurance should be held accountable and they aren’t … and the caps are small potatoes and therefore useless.
We need some type of reform but I haven’t heard any good ideas yet that won’t break us and our government.
Ahhh…tort reform. The solution to all of our problems–NOT!