by L.A.S.
Sorry, insurance executives, but I am just about sick of your whining that healthcare reform will threaten your business. OF COURSE, it will threaten your business! But it became necessary because the system is in danger of breaking down completely.
You, the insurance industry, found every dodge that you could to get around having to pay claims promptly. You, the insurance industry, found every way of weeding out the people who might actually use your product and cost you money. You, the insurance industry, then had the gall to flaunt your swollen purse by spending millions on lobbying and on extravagant getaways for your executives. Do you see the problem?
Some people just don't get it.
Now let me just say that my heart is not going to bleed for the insurance executives of this country. HOWEVER, I am going to be concerned that an abrupt change in the business model of the total insurance industry will affect the security of the investment. In other words, changing the business model could topple not only health insurance but also the life insurance, auto insurance, and annuity branches of the insurance tree, since many insurers cover all those bases.
We cannot go from a completely private model to a mostly public healthcare model unless we develop some kind of phase-in plan.
We would not be in this predicament if we had taken the opportunity in 1919 to start a national healthcare program at about the same time that other nations tackled this issue. Instead, we were sweet-talked by the life insurance industry which convinced us all that it was ready, willing and able to develop a private health insurance industry from scratch.
We never got such a golden opportunity again, not even when Pres. Johnson pushed through a Medicare and Medicaid program in the 1960s.
So that is why I have reluctantly concluded that we must go slow in this drive to develop some kind of public option for every American. We have to develop some long-term planning to phase in this program.
While I am on the subject of public option, I would appreciate it if people stuck to real numbers. The number “one hundred million” or even “a hundred fifty million” has been bandied about as the number of Americans who already have insurance that would switch to a public option if it were made available. That IS NOT TRUE.
The number came from a preliminary study, and yes, at first it did come up with about 125 million or so who might switch to a public option, as yet undefined.
HOWEVER, and I apologize for using so many capital letters in this article, but however, that number was rescinded when the study went back again when it had more specifics to go on.
The corrected final number was about 150 THOUSAND, not million! Repeat, 150 THOUSAND Americans might drop their private coverage and opt for the public option. That is a fraction of the original number and nothing that would drastically endanger the financial underpinnings of the insurance industry or of the public option.
Also I am not happy to see that Obama is proposing adding another layer of bureaucracy to our swelling government payroll. We could get the processing done more efficiently by farming it out to the private sector. We could process claims more efficiently by using private industry, because it already has more advanced computer software for processing medical insurance claims.
So while I readily admit there are pros and cons to the healthcare reform provisions and to the implementation of reforms, I am nonetheless going to stuff some cotton in my ears so I will not have to listen to any more whining from those insurance execs. OK?
Showing posts with label cost of insurance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cost of insurance. Show all posts
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Canadian Drug Prices Up Too -- by Almost 16 Per Cent
by L.A.S.
If you've been idealizing the Canadian health care system because it appears to work while keeping costs under control -- that may be. But the fact remains that overall medical care costs (that is, everything except medications) rose 13 percent in 2008 and just over 14 percent in 2009. And prescription prices rose 15.9 percent so far in 2009.
Canadians are feeling squeezed by the recession just as much as we are. Nervous Canadians are taking advantage of their healthcare benefits, and paying more attention to wellness issues. Among employers, wellness programs are gaining support as a way to control costs while reducing absenteeism and increasing productivity.
If you've been idealizing the Canadian health care system because it appears to work while keeping costs under control -- that may be. But the fact remains that overall medical care costs (that is, everything except medications) rose 13 percent in 2008 and just over 14 percent in 2009. And prescription prices rose 15.9 percent so far in 2009.
Canadians are feeling squeezed by the recession just as much as we are. Nervous Canadians are taking advantage of their healthcare benefits, and paying more attention to wellness issues. Among employers, wellness programs are gaining support as a way to control costs while reducing absenteeism and increasing productivity.
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Americans Finding They Can No Longer Afford Insurance
QUOTE: ‘What we're seeing is a market that's gotten so mature and beyond its customer[s] that people can literally no longer afford to buy the product,’ said Sheryl Skolnick, an analyst with CRT Capital Group. ‘The number of uninsured is growing faster than any player in the game, and it's getting bigger.’
That was from a Wall Street Journal story about the insurance industry. --
When our country decided back in 1919 that it was not going to go the same route as several European nations and embrace national health care, we never imagined that the private health insurance industry could price itself out of the market.
Health care bills have been rising even though doctor bills have been pretty steady. The reason is that more services are ordered -- the X-ray or MRI, the technician to take the X-ray or MRI, the physician specialist to read the X-ray or MRI, the drugs needed for the MRI, the nurse assistant to administer the drugs so that they can take the MRI, etc. You get the idea.
Even managed care has been unable to keep the cost of medical care down. The insurer may arbitrarily decide on a fee for a mammogram, usually $100. The provider may actually bill $300 to cover costs, etc. A mastectomy really costs $5000, but the insurance may only pay $800 or so. Where is the difference going to be made up?
The patient cannot afford to pay both the insurance premiums AND the balance of his medical bill. All too often, he or she may decide, hey, I am not getting my money’s worth out of this deal so I am foregoing the insurance. And this is the decision being reached by employers, too.
Stop and digest this figure -- 6.4 million fewer workers had employer-sponsored health insurance in 2006 than in 2000, according to the Economic Policy Institute. By the way, there are a total of roughly 47 million Americans without health insurance at all, and about 9 million kids with no coverage. How did we come to this state of affairs, and what do we do about it?
Part of the problem is that a nice system, the HMO, was twisted around to serve as a profit-generating mechanism. In the process, premiums rose from 1993 to 2003 by over 7%, but administrative costs rose by 500%. No one can stay in business for long with those kinds of statistics.
I can attest that insurers are under big pressure to reduce their costs. I used to work behind the scenes and saw the cuts in staffing, the reliance on faster computers and software to process mountains of claims (about 4,000 to 6,000 claims a day were received by that company), and the many small cost-cutting measures that affected worker morale.
-------------
PS --
I found a blog about health matters that was very interesting. Here is that writer’s take on “The Managed Health Care Roller Coaster” at http://www.healthbeatblog.org/2008/07/the-managed-car.html.
That was from a Wall Street Journal story about the insurance industry. --
When our country decided back in 1919 that it was not going to go the same route as several European nations and embrace national health care, we never imagined that the private health insurance industry could price itself out of the market.
Health care bills have been rising even though doctor bills have been pretty steady. The reason is that more services are ordered -- the X-ray or MRI, the technician to take the X-ray or MRI, the physician specialist to read the X-ray or MRI, the drugs needed for the MRI, the nurse assistant to administer the drugs so that they can take the MRI, etc. You get the idea.
Even managed care has been unable to keep the cost of medical care down. The insurer may arbitrarily decide on a fee for a mammogram, usually $100. The provider may actually bill $300 to cover costs, etc. A mastectomy really costs $5000, but the insurance may only pay $800 or so. Where is the difference going to be made up?
The patient cannot afford to pay both the insurance premiums AND the balance of his medical bill. All too often, he or she may decide, hey, I am not getting my money’s worth out of this deal so I am foregoing the insurance. And this is the decision being reached by employers, too.
Stop and digest this figure -- 6.4 million fewer workers had employer-sponsored health insurance in 2006 than in 2000, according to the Economic Policy Institute. By the way, there are a total of roughly 47 million Americans without health insurance at all, and about 9 million kids with no coverage. How did we come to this state of affairs, and what do we do about it?
Part of the problem is that a nice system, the HMO, was twisted around to serve as a profit-generating mechanism. In the process, premiums rose from 1993 to 2003 by over 7%, but administrative costs rose by 500%. No one can stay in business for long with those kinds of statistics.
I can attest that insurers are under big pressure to reduce their costs. I used to work behind the scenes and saw the cuts in staffing, the reliance on faster computers and software to process mountains of claims (about 4,000 to 6,000 claims a day were received by that company), and the many small cost-cutting measures that affected worker morale.
-------------
PS --
I found a blog about health matters that was very interesting. Here is that writer’s take on “The Managed Health Care Roller Coaster” at http://www.healthbeatblog.org/2008/07/the-managed-car.html.
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