Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Insurance, Capitol Hill & Blogs, Pt.8 – Is ‘across state lines’ adequate?

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More suggestions come from blogger ‘Something Beside More Government!!’, who apparently promotes creating ‘affordability’ of health insurance/care by promoting no government intervention at all. “Something’s” suggestions are now listed:

1. ‘Let consumers buy health insurance across state lines.’

2. ‘Rein in the medical malpractice attorneys.’

3. ‘Reduce the complexity of health insurance (for example, have it function more like car insurance where you don’t expect the insurance company to pay for gas and oil changes).’
4. ‘Scale back the crazy Stark regulations and let entrepreneurial physicians find new ways to provide medical care.’
5. ‘Encourage more patient-physician transactions where there isn’t a third party.’

(1) Treating item #1 first, while allowing the health insurance industry to disregard state mandated consumer protections to increase ‘Friedmanistic’ competition in a capitalistic marketplace, premium rates would, inevitable, fall. But, if our ultimate objective is to raise our nation’s status to the standard of all the other industrialized nations, then we must consider the plight of our 25 million Americans who are ‘underinsured’. It has been proven that many of these people would be better off with no health insurance than the inadequate health insurance they are paying for.

By allowing health insurance to be scaled back to inadequacy, as Florida has done (see” Fla. Health Insurance Flops Fast”), we are encouraging the ‘free-riding’ practice that Mr. Wyden and Mr. Romney are, rightly, so much against. With no regulation, this is what you get. (For a detailed look at the magnitude of the ‘underinsured’ problem, please refer to the article series entitled “Major 'Underinsured' Sector”.)

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