Health Insurance Reform
How complex is health insurance reform? What can we do to help? Here are a few ideas…. What do you think?
1. Expand the number of health insurance providers that consumers can choose from.?
2. Increase the number of Americans who are covered by health insurance, either public or private. This is the most common goal due to the large number of uninsured Americans.?
3. To improve the overall quality of the health insurance industry.?
4. To make it easier for consumers to seek specialty care.?
3. To decrease the cost of health care and insurance?
September 12th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I think cost is the bottom line. Health care is ridiculously overpriced because it is a neccessity for life. Its like price gouging in a hurricane for things like water, that we can’t live without. If people would stop preying upon one another, than we wouldn’t have these problems. Its fundamental to human nature though to take advantage of any situation to get ahead, even if its at the expense of someone else. If health care wasn’t at such a high premium, insurance premiums wouldn’t be so high.
September 12th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
The fact is, the government put us in this situation and there really is no easy way out. There have been proposals after proposals after proposals…..and they all stink. Why do they stink? They stink because the people writing the proposals haven’t really spent the time to understand the entire market. When reading some of these proposals I am absolutely baffled. So before we try and figure out what the answer is on the test, we need to go to class, do the homework and read the book.
September 12th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
The key factor is decreasing cost. Most Americans can’t afford insurance and as other expenses such as gas and food continue to increase, even less Americans are going to be able to afford it. What is the solution? If it was that easy, I guess it would already be done.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Frankly, I don’t think many understand the full fabric of the health insurance INDUSTRY in this country, myself included. Much of it is regulated by insurance commissioners and legislatures in each state. Each state mandates different benefits. Some insurance companies opt out of doing business in some states as each must garner state approval with regard to their offerings. Insurance agents must be licensed by each state in which they do business. Consumers who may have figured out their health insurance alternatives in NJ, for example, have to learn them all over again in FL when they move here. Insurance company underwriters are assigned to specific states so as to conform with their respective regulations. It is immensley complex. And, the states do a terrible job of informing and educating the consumer.
We all live in a Federal Republic and politically the issue of State’s Rights are on the line with this one. Admittedly many of our institutions are “broken” - as in unresponsive to the needs of our citizens at both the state and federal level. They both have a huge stake in the regulation pie - the power to regulate will not easily be abdicated. It will take the cooperation and compromise of all players to rationalize our health care system. And that is not going to happen without a ground swell of outrage from the populace and courageous leadership to implement reform. People have to be stopped from falling through the cracks of a broken system.