Health Care and Insurance Reform
It’s difficult to go anywhere in this country at the moment without hearing discussion of pending health care reform legislation. We hear a lot from the most strident supporters and opponents of reform, but partisan invective has overpowered reasoned discussion of the issue.
The shape of the debate changes on a daily basis, and it remains to be seen if and when health care reform legislation will pass and what form it will take. While the President and Congress work through the details, I have developed a list of health care reform principles and proposals that I will promote.
First and foremost, I believe that any reforms made to our health care system need to provide access to high quality health care for all Americans. We also need to provide cost-efficient options for the uninsured and to make health care insurance more affordable for small businesses.
While I support access to high quality health care for all Americans, I do not believe that a private health care system is an obstacle to reaching that goal. On the contrary, given the entrenched private market history of our health care system, I believe it is more prudent and cost-effective to modify our current system with public incentives to provide health care to all Americans, which will lower our overall costs and maintain our health care quality.
Equitable Private Insurance
The profit motive is fundamentally at odds with the established purpose of insurance companies, which is to provide cost-effective reimbursement for its policy-holders. Though the two goals may appear to be mutually exclusive, we can develop benchmarks that will serve the needs of both the insurance industry and their policy holders.
At the same time, we need to reintroduce competition into the insurance industry marketplace by ending the exemption to anti-trust laws, which will also end the ability of insurance companies to impose unchecked premium hikes on their customers. Real competition in the insurance market will also give Americans real choices when it comes to shopping for a plan.
Given the current extent of health care cost escalation and under-coverage throughout the country, our most urgent goal should be toward increasing coverage, which can be accomplished through a variety of federal incentives:
-Standardized basic health care policies that would allow all Americans the ability to shop for coverage on an apples-to-apples basis, rather than trying to decipher small print exceptions.
-No exceptions for any pre-existing conditions and limits on the costs of high-end premiums. This would ensure that individuals who appear to be “higher risk” are not priced out of availability.
-Premium increases that are evenly applied across the entire policy-holder base to minimize individual increases by spreading costs across the entire membership.
When insurance companies are given incentives to widen their membership base in order to remain viable, it will effectively replace a mandated government insurance policy while still maintaining the cost efficiencies and entrepreneurship of the private market.