Healthcare reform

[Cknolls]

come on...

 

that's like saying, no one has disproved that the reason we haven't been attacked since 9-11 is because I bought a glass horse statue in Venice so it must be true.

 

 

 

......or proving that jobs have been saved?

[Balta1701]

I really hope all sides keep fighting. As long as the compromise isn't let's all get what we want, it will be better.

Totally disagree. The longer each side keeps fighting, the stronger the insurance companies get, because they keep buying off more and more congresspeople. And the one side who is most vehemently opposed to doing anything that will make the situation better is the insurance company side.

[HuskyCaucasian]

It's still proven that the majority of the country doesn't want this, and they are going to shove it right down our throat.

Actually, a majority of the country DOES want health care reform... something like 60%, and if you remove the public option, it's well below 50%.

 

I'll try and find a link to the poll I saw a bout a week ago.

[vandy125]

Totally disagree. The longer each side keeps fighting, the stronger the insurance companies get, because they keep buying off more and more congresspeople. And the one side who is most vehemently opposed to doing anything that will make the situation better is the insurance company side.

Completely disagree with this. Where do you get this from? Working in the insurance industry, I know that there is a huge move to want changes made because of the unsustainable rise in costs. You are buying into the Obama/Pelosi line of Insurance Companies being evil. Absolute Bull. The only thing they have been vehemently opposed to is the public options being thrown around there. I don't blame them if you look at how Medicaid and Medicare undercut prices that hospitals and doctors need. Because they undercut them the cost of those programs get shifted over to insurance companies.

[Balta1701]

Completely disagree with this. Where do you get this from? Working in the insurance industry, I know that there is a huge move to want changes made because of the unsustainable rise in costs. You are buying into the Obama/Pelosi line of Insurance Companies being evil. Absolute Bull. The only thing they have been vehemently opposed to is the public options being thrown around there. I don't blame them if you look at how Medicaid and Medicare undercut prices that hospitals and doctors need. Because they undercut them the cost of those programs get shifted over to insurance companies.

In other words, the insurance companies think that everyone other than them ought to be paying more.

[Texsox]

Totally disagree. The longer each side keeps fighting, the stronger the insurance companies get, because they keep buying off more and more congresspeople. And the one side who is most vehemently opposed to doing anything that will make the situation better is the insurance company side.

 

So the Dems should quit fighting and accept the GOP plan.

[jasonxctf]

......or proving that jobs have been saved?

 

great point... yes that is another area where you can't prove or disprove the statement.

[jasonxctf]

So the Dems should quit fighting and accept the GOP plan.

 

sh*t if America wanted the Republican's making these decisions, they wouldn't have voted them out of control.

 

 

[vandy125]

In other words, the insurance companies think that everyone other than them ought to be paying more.

 

Not sure where you are getting that line from either. Everyone wants the costs to go down. They are skyrocketing at way more than the current rate of inflation. It needs to go down across the board somehow. Isn't that the whole point of this? We are all paying more each and every year.

[Texsox]

sh*t if America wanted the Republican's making these decisions, they wouldn't have voted them out of control.

 

America also voted Republicans into office. They want those leaders to work, not roll over and play dead.

[Balta1701]

Not sure where you are getting that line from either. Everyone wants the costs to go down. They are skyrocketing at way more than the current rate of inflation. It needs to go down across the board somehow. Isn't that the whole point of this? We are all paying more each and every year.

And IMO, a big, big, big part of the reason why is the fact that the insurers, and hell, much of the medical apparatus in this country, has no legitimate cost-control type competition. If an insurer wants to increase its profitability, it can do so by raising rates and it doesn't have to fear losing its high revenue customers because they're all either locked in through their employers or there's no other insurer that they can go to. So they can spend huge amounts of money on administrative things that only slightly increase profitability and just raise rates to pay for it, and you wind up with a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy in the system because of it.

 

The same sort of thing happens in pharmaceuticals. Because people often actually need those drugs but are shielded from much of the cost, if the company wants to increase profitability, it tries to sell more pills, so it spends a fortune on advertising, and raises the price per pill to pay for all those ads.

[southsider2k5]

Interesting write up from the right wing WSJ.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000142405...3109310680.html

 

The Competition Cure

 

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By

 

‘Competition" has become a watchword of Team Obama's push for its health-care bill. Specifically, the Administration has defended its public insurance option as a necessary competitive goad to the private health insurance industry.

 

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius routinely calls for more choice and competition in health care. In his weekly address this past weekend, President Obama raised the issue directly: "The source of a lot of these fears about government-run health care is confusion over what's called the public option. This is one idea among many to provide more competition and choice, especially in the many places around the country where just one insurer thoroughly dominates the marketplace." We take it this refers to a state in which one insurer holds most of the business.

 

It is no secret that this page is all for competition in the marketplace. If indeed that's the goal, allow us to suggest a path to it that will be a lot easier than erecting the impossible dream of a public option: Let insurance companies sell health-care policies across state lines.

 

This excellent idea has been before Congress since at least 2005, when Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona proposed it. It came up again recently in an exchange between Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday and John Rother, executive vice president of AARP.

 

Mr. Wallace: "If you really want competition why not remove the restriction which now says that if I live in Washington, D.C. I've got to buy a D.C. health plan, and instead create a national market for health insurance, so that if there's a cheaper plan in Pennsylvania, I could buy in Pennsylvania?"

 

Mr. Rother: "There are states and localities where health care is much less expensive than others, and if we allow people to buy all their insurance from those places, it will raise the rates there. And it's called risk selection. It's a real problem, given the fact that health care costs can vary substantially from one place to another. So I think while the idea sounds appealing, the consequence would be it would make health care more expensive for those people who live in those low-cost areas."

 

How did Mr. Rother arrive at this conclusion?

 

His claim assumes that what makes insurance expensive in places like New Jersey—where the annual cost of an individual plan for a 25-year-old male in 2006 was $5,880—is merely the higher cost of medical services in the Garden State. He sounds an alarm in the rest of the country by suggesting that an individual living in, say, Kentucky—where an annual plan for a 25-year-old male cost less than $1,000 in 2006—would be asked to subsidize plan members living in high-priced states.

 

That's not how interstate insurance would work. Devon Herrick, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis who has written extensively on this subject, notes that insurance companies operating nationally would compete nationally. The reason a Kentucky plan written for an individual from New Jersey would save the New Jerseyan money is that New Jersey is highly regulated, with costly mandated benefits and guaranteed access to insurance.

 

Affordability would improve if consumers could escape states where each policy is loaded with mandates. "If consumers do not want expensive 'Cadillac' health plans that pay for acupuncture, fertility treatments or hairpieces, they could buy from insurers in a state that does not mandate such benefits," Mr. Herrick has written.

 

A 2008 publication "Consumer Response to a National Marketplace in Individual Insurance," (Parente et al., University of Minnesota) estimated that if individuals in New Jersey could buy health insurance in a national market, 49% more New Jerseyans in the individual and small-group market would have coverage. Competition among states would produce a more rational regulatory environment in all states.

 

This doesn't mean sick people who have kept up their coverage but are more difficult to insure would be left out. Congressman Shadegg advocates government funding for high-risk pools, noting that their numbers are tiny. The big benefit would come from a market supply of affordable insurance.

 

Mr. Rother also said "risk selection" is a problem. But the coverage mandates cause that. As more healthy people opt out of health insurance because it is too expensive relative to what they consume, the pool transforms into a group of older, sicker people. Prices go higher still and more healthy people flee. High-mandate states are in what experts call an "adverse selection death spiral."

 

Interstate competition made the U.S. one of the world's most efficient, consumer driven markets. But health insurance is a glaring exception. When the competition caucus in Team Obama has to look for Plan B, this is it.

 

And a similar article from the Trib.

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion...0,2946061.story

 

Let insurance companies compete across U.S.

 

With public support draining away from a comprehensive health-care overhaul, it is time to consider modest changes such as encouraging more private competition in health insurance. This doesn't require another big-government program. It only requires junking laws that prevent health insurers from selling across state lines.

 

Right now, the U.S. does not have a national market for health insurance. It has 50 separate state markets. Erecting walls around each state means less competition and higher prices for consumers. There's not even one market for the Chicago area. If you live in South Holland or Calumet City, your insurance options could be completely different from your Indiana neighbors in Hammond or Merrillville. What sense does that make?

 

The easiest way to see how insurance competition benefits consumers is to look at auto insurance. That's a huge, nationwide market and companies compete intensively for a share of it. Some stress their low prices, others customer service, whatever gives them an edge in the marketplace. Geico and Progressive have been especially aggressive in touting cost savings. State Farm and Allstate certainly compete on price, but they stress service after an accident. That's why Allstate says "you're in good hands," and State Farm says it will be there "like a good neighbor." Other companies, like SafeAuto, focus on drivers who want only minimum coverage to meet state license requirements. In short, auto insurance companies compete vigorously to provide what different consumers want, and they tell them so in national advertisements. Life insurance companies do the same thing. There are even companies that specialize in comparing policies for customers. Competition drives down excess profits and means better, cheaper options for consumers.

 

Ever see an ad touting health insurance? They are rare because the markets are small and companies don't need to compete aggressively on price or service. Introducing such competition would be good for consumers, wouldn't require another Washington bureaucracy and could be done quickly.

 

Obviously, small changes like this wouldn't solve the myriad problems with America's health-care system. But modesty can be a virtue. In fact, Americans typically favor incremental steps to solve big problems rather than top-down, technocratic plans, which are far more common in France or Germany.

 

Twice now, comprehensive government plans to change health care have faced withering criticism. First Lady Hillary Clinton's plan, formulated secretly in the Clinton White House, was dead on arrival in Congress. Barack Obama and his advisers tried the opposite approach, giving Congress general guidelines and letting them work out the details. Several plans are still on the table, but voters are clearly anxious about what they are hearing.

 

Although Obama and Clinton tried different legislative tactics, their plans shared the same fatal flaws. They tried to do too much at once, and they centralized too much control in Washington. Now is a good time to reboot, isolate specific problems and focus on them. Introducing more market competition in health-care insurance is a good place to start.

 

Charles Lipson is a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

[Texsox]

Not sure where you are getting that line from either. Everyone wants the costs to go down. They are skyrocketing at way more than the current rate of inflation. It needs to go down across the board somehow. Isn't that the whole point of this? We are all paying more each and every year.

 

It seems that insurance companies are ok with them getting steep discounts and others picking up the rest of the cost. In other words if the hospitals "broke even" on the insured, and made their profit on everyone else, the insurance company would not mind. Or stated another way, the insurance companies are not interested in an equitable pricing structure, they are looking for the cheapest and least used for themselves.

[vandy125]

And IMO, a big, big, big part of the reason why is the fact that the insurers, and hell, much of the medical apparatus in this country, has no legitimate cost-control type competition. If an insurer wants to increase its profitability, it can do so by raising rates and it doesn't have to fear losing its high revenue customers because they're all either locked in through their employers or there's no other insurer that they can go to. So they can spend huge amounts of money on administrative things that only slightly increase profitability and just raise rates to pay for it, and you wind up with a ridiculous amount of bureaucracy in the system because of it.

 

The same sort of thing happens in pharmaceuticals. Because people often actually need those drugs but are shielded from much of the cost, if the company wants to increase profitability, it tries to sell more pills, so it spends a fortune on advertising, and raises the price per pill to pay for all those ads.

As I have said before, a pretty large chunk of insurance companies are non-profit and are actually trying to lower their administrative costs as much as possible to benefit their members and give them the best they can offer. I can't speak to the other industries though. I would love to see what would happen if they allowed health plans across state lines. That would be some good competition and would not need to get the government involved in running an insurance company.

[Balta1701]

Interesting write up from the right wing WSJ.

 

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000142405...3109310680.html

 

 

 

And a similar article from the Trib.

 

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion...0,2946061.story

While I see some logic in those arguments, there is one key issue that always bothers me about it. Why exactly do we think that a solution to our health care issues is "Covering less stuff"? That's usually an implicit or explicit point in those arguments; it would enable insurers to get around the minimum coverage requirements that some states have instituted by offering the same plans as other states. But the issue I have with that is...why exactly do we think that covering less stuff with insurance is a way to fix what ails the industry? It strikes me that a big problem with health insurance as it currently stands is that it tends to not cover enough anyway. Thus you have the common occurence of people fighting their insurer to get them to cover treatments that you'd expect to be covered if you have insurance, and just flat out awful things like different prices for men and women based on whether or not they can have kids or different prices for people whether or not their policies cover those sorts of things, etc.

 

I feel like one of the goals here is to establish some basic level of coverage such that people don't have to worry about getting sick, not to have people have more opportunity to gamble on which disease they might get.

[kapkomet]

sh*t if America wanted the Republican's making these decisions, they wouldn't have voted them out of control.

That's not true, either.

[vandy125]

It seems that insurance companies are ok with them getting steep discounts and others picking up the rest of the cost. In other words if the hospitals "broke even" on the insured, and made their profit on everyone else, the insurance company would not mind. Or stated another way, the insurance companies are not interested in an equitable pricing structure, they are looking for the cheapest and least used for themselves.

 

They already are picking up the extra costs of Medicare/Medicaid that get shifted over to them just so that the hospitals can break even. I may just be seeing one side of this, but here is an article that talks about the underpayments by those government programs that insured people are actually paying for.

Summary Article

 

Full Document of Research on $88.8 Billion cost-shift

 

It would be much better if there was some equitable pricing structure or standards for even what gets charged for different procedures.

[lostfan]

Which is what they were going to do all along. This is no surprise. It's still proven that the majority of the country doesn't want this, and they are going to shove it right down our throat.

Wait what, a majority of Americans don't want to see healthcare reform? Were you taking a nap when Obama made half his campaign about wanting to reform healthcare and then he got elected in a landslide and his party got a supermajority?

 

The opposition has gotten louder but believe it or not, people's minds haven't really changed all that much from when this started. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/...changing-minds/

[jasonxctf]

America also voted Republicans into office. They want those leaders to work, not roll over and play dead.

 

It's a funny irony.

 

In the 2008 congressional elections, the democrats won an even 60% of the seats.

In the Senate, the democrats currently own 60% (incl the 2 indpts who caucas with them) of the seats.

 

So I'd say, its safe to say, that the American population really wanted the Democrats in charge to handle the issues of the economy, health care and war(s).

[bmags]

irony?

[southsider2k5]

While I see some logic in those arguments, there is one key issue that always bothers me about it. Why exactly do we think that a solution to our health care issues is "Covering less stuff"? That's usually an implicit or explicit point in those arguments; it would enable insurers to get around the minimum coverage requirements that some states have instituted by offering the same plans as other states. But the issue I have with that is...why exactly do we think that covering less stuff with insurance is a way to fix what ails the industry? It strikes me that a big problem with health insurance as it currently stands is that it tends to not cover enough anyway. Thus you have the common occurence of people fighting their insurer to get them to cover treatments that you'd expect to be covered if you have insurance, and just flat out awful things like different prices for men and women based on whether or not they can have kids or different prices for people whether or not their policies cover those sorts of things, etc.

 

I feel like one of the goals here is to establish some basic level of coverage such that people don't have to worry about getting sick, not to have people have more opportunity to gamble on which disease they might get.

 

So instead I pay for whatever risks you take. That sounds fair.

[StrangeSox]

Any form of insurance is collectivized risk. I get to pay for whatever risks or mistakes you make if we're insured through the same company.

[kapkomet]

Wait what, a majority of Americans don't want to see healthcare reform? Were you taking a nap when Obama made half his campaign about wanting to reform healthcare and then he got elected in a landslide and his party got a supermajority?

 

The opposition has gotten louder but believe it or not, people's minds haven't really changed all that much from when this started. http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/...changing-minds/

 

He got elected because he wanted to change health care? As I've seen said, Jesus could've ran as a Republican and not gotten elected in 2008.

 

[Texsox]

It's a funny irony.

 

In the 2008 congressional elections, the democrats won an even 60% of the seats.

In the Senate, the democrats currently own 60% (incl the 2 indpts who caucas with them) of the seats.

 

So I'd say, its safe to say, that the American population really wanted the Democrats in charge to handle the issues of the economy, health care and war(s).

 

Not certain how many Congressman and Senators you voted for, but for 99.99% of Americans they get one Congressman and one Senator per election. So there are a lot of Americans who do not want Democrats to do that. That would be everyone who voted GOP, where their candidate won or lost.

[Balta1701]

Not certain how many Congressman and Senators you voted for, but for 99.99% of Americans they get one Congressman and one Senator per election. So there are a lot of Americans who do not want Democrats to do that. That would be everyone who voted GOP, where their candidate won or lost.

Of cours...there could also be more than a few Democrats who don't want Health care reform. Conversely, there could be more than a few Republicans who have had to deal with an insurance company.