Thursday, June 18, 2009
Regulating Health Insurance
Here’s an idea. If the Federal Government wants to do something to help the American public better afford health care you do not enter into direct competition with health insurance companies. If you want to regulate the health insurance companies then try this.
Right now you can select from a myriad of companies, some local, some regional, and some national. A quick look at the America’s Health Insurance Plans web site (http://www.ahip.org) will show you over 1,300 member companies – all offering health insurance. So it would be reasonable to ask, “With over 1300 choices, what’s the problem?” Well, there are several. For one thing, of the 1,300 members, there are 23 that start out “BlueCross and BlueShield”; several are really local providers who provide healthcare benefits for one company, or one union local. The bottom line is that you have to buy a “plan”, and if you’re local healthcare provider doesn’t offer what you want, or what you feel you need – that’s too bad. Hey, at least you have coverage, right?
If the Feds want to do something, let them build a database of insurance company “features”, and then let the American public log onto that web site and pick and choose the features they want, with the deductibles they want. You might want the outpatient coverage from BlueCross/BlueShield with the pharmacy coverage that Aetna provides and the preventative care from Kaiser Permanente. If you are employed and your employer says, “I’ll pick up half the tab”, then you enter your employers tax ID so the Feds can verify your employment (by looking at the IRS computers) and bill half of the cost to your employer with the rest coming from payroll deduction.
You get a plastic Smartcard that holds all your benefit information (and even a digitized thumb print if you want to get fancy) that you take to the doctors’ office, pharmacy, or hospital. This information is used for billing.
Speaking of billing; the backside of this great database is another database for billing. The computer doesn’t do the billing, but it does pass the billing information on to the insurance companies. The insurance companies get their premiums by EFT, much as they do now, and send out payments to doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, much the same as they do now. The notice we all get that says, “This is not a bill” from our insurance company showing what they are responsible for is done automatically by the government computer. When you pick your features, you can also select to be contacted by email, which would save the government tons of money.
Are there holes in this? Sure, but smarter people than I can figure those out. Biggest benefits to this idea are it keeps the government out of direct competition with insurance companies, it gives the American people better choice, and this isn’t 650 pages long!
Right now you can select from a myriad of companies, some local, some regional, and some national. A quick look at the America’s Health Insurance Plans web site (http://www.ahip.org) will show you over 1,300 member companies – all offering health insurance. So it would be reasonable to ask, “With over 1300 choices, what’s the problem?” Well, there are several. For one thing, of the 1,300 members, there are 23 that start out “BlueCross and BlueShield”; several are really local providers who provide healthcare benefits for one company, or one union local. The bottom line is that you have to buy a “plan”, and if you’re local healthcare provider doesn’t offer what you want, or what you feel you need – that’s too bad. Hey, at least you have coverage, right?
If the Feds want to do something, let them build a database of insurance company “features”, and then let the American public log onto that web site and pick and choose the features they want, with the deductibles they want. You might want the outpatient coverage from BlueCross/BlueShield with the pharmacy coverage that Aetna provides and the preventative care from Kaiser Permanente. If you are employed and your employer says, “I’ll pick up half the tab”, then you enter your employers tax ID so the Feds can verify your employment (by looking at the IRS computers) and bill half of the cost to your employer with the rest coming from payroll deduction.
You get a plastic Smartcard that holds all your benefit information (and even a digitized thumb print if you want to get fancy) that you take to the doctors’ office, pharmacy, or hospital. This information is used for billing.
Speaking of billing; the backside of this great database is another database for billing. The computer doesn’t do the billing, but it does pass the billing information on to the insurance companies. The insurance companies get their premiums by EFT, much as they do now, and send out payments to doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, much the same as they do now. The notice we all get that says, “This is not a bill” from our insurance company showing what they are responsible for is done automatically by the government computer. When you pick your features, you can also select to be contacted by email, which would save the government tons of money.
Are there holes in this? Sure, but smarter people than I can figure those out. Biggest benefits to this idea are it keeps the government out of direct competition with insurance companies, it gives the American people better choice, and this isn’t 650 pages long!
