Tag: Health insurance

Should the States Set Up ObamaCare Exchanges?

May 23, 2012• 4

By John Goodman & Linda Gorman

Under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), state governments are expected to set up health insurance exchanges through which individuals will buy their own health insurance, in many cases with substantial subsidies. Should the states comply?

In the following point-counterpoint discussion, Linda Gorman and I give opposing answers to this important question. Leave your thoughts in the comments.

John Goodman: Yes

If the states abdicate their responsibilities under PPACA, the federal government will step in and act in lieu of the state. Under this scenario, states will relinquish all power to make a bad law better. Letting the federal government implement reform almost guarantees bad outcomes.

Linda Gorman: No

Exchanges are required to perform a variety of duties beyond distributing ObamaCare subsidies, and these duties are likely to add significantly to estimated costs. Some of them will damage a state’s business climate by creating new opportunities for crony capitalism. Some require that currently fashionable, but poorly tested, models be forced on health care providers. Some require that state exchanges have expertise equal to private insurers. Others force states to increase the cost of health insurance for people who currently have coverage.

John Goodman continued:

The states should engage in preemptive reform over the next two years. This means enacting responsible, rational reforms — the kind of reforms that they should have enacted all along, in the absence of federal legislation. Where possible, states should try to make their reforms compatible with the new federal law — but only if compatibility does not sacrifice the major goals of the state’s reform.

Even Aetna CEO Admits: We’re Toast

May 11, 2012• 15

By Joe Flower

I’ve been saying it for years (and in 3D and Technicolor in my new book Healthcare Beyond Reform): The Standard Model of Healthcare (the traditional unmodified fee-for-service, commodified, defined-benefit payment system) is broken and doomed. It’s fascinating to hear that even the CEO of Aetna, Mark Bertolini, said exactly that recently at a major healthcare technology conference — and that Forbes, a bastion of business and the private approach to everything, would publish an article on his remarks.

At Health 2.0 last fall, Bertolini said that he no longer thinks of Aetna as an insurance company, but primarily as an information company. This time, he made these main points:

Obama Supporters Put High Court on Trial

Apr 30, 2012• 44

By Betsy McCaughey

As the U.S. Supreme Court deliberates the Obama healthcare law, the court itself is on trial.

Obamacare supporters are attacking the justices as “hacks dressed up in black robes,” calling for limits on their life tenure, and claiming judicial review is undemocratic.

Worse, President Obama and his Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius are shoveling money into implementing the law as fast as possible and refuse to discuss an alternative. That’s irresponsible. What’s needed now is not court bashing but contingency planning.

The Obama administration and allies in Congress have nine weeks to plan how to pick up the pieces on a vast array of health insurance issues. It’s the President’s duty to have a plan. It will signal his respect for the nation’s system of checks and balances — something he has utterly failed to show.

Medicaid-driven Budget Crisis Needs a Marcus Welby/Steve Jobs Solution

Apr 18, 2012• 20

By Dave Chase

Not a week goes by without seeing some headline about deficits pushing municipalities to desperation or Bill Gates describing state budgets using accounting techniques that would make Enron blush. The common culprit: healthcare costs with Medicaid being the biggest driver.

Recently Carly Fiorina opined on The Health Care Blog about Health Care, Not Coverage. She pointed out the unnecessary administrative burden that could be better spent on delivering healthcare. Fortunately, there is already a proven model, developed and run by physicians, that has shown it can reduce costs 20-40% by removing administrative overhead while improving outcomes (e.g., 40-80% reductions in hospital admissions) and greatly increasing patient satisfaction with Google/Apple level of patient satisfaction.

It can be described as two parts Marcus Welby and one part Steve Jobs. The federal health reform bill included a little-noticed clause allowing for Direct Primary Care (DPC) models to be a part of the state health insurance exchanges. That little-noticed clause (Section 1301 (a)(3) of the Affordable Care Act and proposed HR3315 to expand DPC to Medicare recipients) should have the effect of massively spreading the DPC model throughout the country. In California, the DPC model was introduced in a bill to bring explicit support for the DPC model as has been done in the state of Washington and elsewhere.

Another Look at Health Insurance Exchanges

Apr 11, 2012• 23

By JONATHAN HALVORSON

Of all the provisions of the ACA, probably none has received greater attention from health insurers than the exchanges. Though the exchanges are expected to be the conduit for just a small fraction of all the insured at their start in 2014, they will be where most of the growth in health insurance lies. Given the rule that the individual exchanges must be integrated with Medicaid, their role will be critical for any insurer that wants to compete and grow in the individual or Medicaid markets. The dominance of the exchanges for growth in the small group and even the Medicare markets may not be not far behind. It should be no surprise if, eventually, all fully-insured business goes through the exchanges, leaving only self-insured plans outside.

So getting it right matters. Now is the time to think hard about getting it right, before the exchanges are created and inertia sets in. And, as some have argued, getting it right means that we think about the exchanges as places for people to choose their health care, not just their health insurance. So how should we do that?

Here is what we should not do: make it easy to choose care without considering both the quality and the cost of care delivered by the care system. It would be an enormous lost opportunity to improve consumer attitudes towards health care if we built the exchanges to make it easy for people to reason: “I like doctor A. Doctor A accepts insurance products X, Y and Z. Of these three, insurance product X seems to have the lowest cost, so I’ll choose product X.”

Infographic: The Future of Healthcare

Apr 10, 2012• 3

Click to open infographic

The Supreme Court on Moral Hazard

Apr 3, 2012• 49

By David Dranove

I have had to take some time off for the funeral of someone very near to me, so I have not had a chance to comment on the Supreme Court hearings. Nor do I have much time to do so now. But I would like to comment on Justice Alito’s line of questioning about burial insurance. His questioning was in response to one argument used to justify the purchase mandate, namely that sick individuals will receive medical care at someone else’s expense and therefore there is an economic justification for mandating the purchase of health insurance in order to prevent free riding. Alito noted that individuals who did not provide for their own burials will still be buried at taxpayer expense. This is another form of free riding. If the Supreme Court were to uphold mandatory purchase of health insurance, could Congress not also mandate purchase of burial insurance?

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli seemed surprised by Alito’s questions and did not provide a good answer. Yet these questions strike at the heart of the case and at deeper economic issues. There is a direct analogy between the market for burials and the market for healthcare. Just as some patients free ride off of the generosity of others, some deceased do the same thing. By extension, any time that a good is provided at a price below cost, whether by the government, a charity, or any other organization for that matter, we can expect a certain degree of moral hazard behavior. Some individuals who ought to purchase the good themselves will instead free ride on the generosity of others.

Health Care Reform: Good for Business

Apr 3, 2012• 6

By Brian England

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard six hours of oral arguments for and against the constitutionality of the new health care law. As a small business owner, I am not a constitutional scholar, but I can definitively say this: the Affordable Care Act is cutting my health care costs and helping my business.

My wife and I run an auto repair shop in Columbia, MD. We started as a small, family-business in 1978. Now, we’re a well-respected business with 19 employees, a long string of awards and a reputation for service.

One of the biggest barriers to growing a successful business has been the rising cost of health insurance. We’re committed to offering insurance coverage, but over the past 10 years it has become a real struggle to keep up with the costs.

We’ve become accustomed to rates going up 10 percent to 20 percent each year (sometimes even more), and we’ve had to look at many different ways to deal with the extra expense. We’ve got a great agent who does a lot of research and works hard to find the best options for us. But in the end, we’re the ones who have to decide what to do — and foot the bill.

Is Health Insurance Too Cheap?

Mar 30, 2012• 9

By Peter Ubel, MD

Researchers at USC recently published a study designed to find out how much people are willing to pay for better drug coverage from their health insurance plan. The question they posed to the general public was straightforward: How much extra money would you pay per month for a health insurance plan that would pay for “specialty drugs” if you need them?

Specialty drugs are expensive new treatments for diseases like leukemia, multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. These drugs often cost tens of thousands of dollars, and in some cases even run into six figures per patient. But these high costs can be accompanied by significant benefit. Gleevec for example can dramatically increase life expectancy for people with otherwise fatal leukemia.

Keep in mind that not only are specialty drugs expensive but they are being used with increasing frequency. According to the USC team, 3 out of 100 people in the United States will use at least one specialty drug in the following year.

How much would you pay to make sure you aren’t responsible to pay for these drugs out of pocket? Would you be willing to give your insurance company an extra $5 per month? $10? Maybe even $20?

The USC team found that, on average, people were willing to spend around $13 extra per month to make sure their health insurance plans cover such specialty drugs. (The study was published in the April issue of Health Affairs, and was led by John Romney.) To put that into perspective, the actuarial cost of such coverage—how much insurance companies would expect to spend per person if everyone obtained such coverage—is around $5 per month.

What If We End Up with a Health Care System Like the One they Have In New Jersey?

Mar 30, 2012• 100

By Robert Laszewski

What would individual health insurance cost if the court strikes the mandate down and still requires insurers to cover everyone?

With the Supreme Court justices sounding like they might strike the mandate down, this is a question I’ve been getting a lot lately.

I have pointed to New Jersey as a real life example of what can happen when insurance reforms take place but there is no incentive for consumers to buy it until the day they need it.

In 1992, New Jersey passed health insurance reform that required insurance carriers to either offer individual health insurance on a guaranteed issue basis or pay an assessment to carriers that did. Other elements of the legislation were:

Guaranteed coverage and renewability for all eligible people regardless of their health status. A pre-existing condition exclusion does allow insurers to limit coverage during the first 12 months (a limitation which is not contained in the Affordable Care Act).
Guaranteed renewal of policies, provided (1) the insured does not become eligible for coverage under a group plan; (2) premiums are paid in a timely fashion; and (3) no fraud is committed by the insured.
Community rating of the premiums, with variation allowed only for family status (single, adult plus child, husband and wife, and family). (The Affordable Care Act allows rate variations of up to three times from young to old.)
Standardized insurance plans, referred to as Plans A, B, C, and D (indemnity options) and a single HMO plan.