Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

American Health insurance System 201, Pt.9 –– Facts, suggestions & summary.

Previous…

Oddly enough, when crunching the numbers, based on the Massachusetts health insurance/care model (which Mr. Obama closely follows) and projecting them to a nationwide scale, the figure comes out to about $73 billion. For more on these calculations, please refer to the article series entitled “The Proactive Health Care Approach, Pt.13 – Simple arithmetic 201”. If there’s any validity to these figures (it does appear that Mr. Cutler has done his homework) we only need $73 billion in health insurance funding and we have $118 billion available ($45 B. + $73 B.) Note, this method could provide all the health insurance funding benefits required, without costing 90% of the taxpayers a dime. Once again, it all comes down to how the question is presented.

What should we do with all this now? As Mr. Gallington submits, supposing our presidential candidates proposed this "assigned risk" concept for the high-risk people that need health insurance? This would be like what most states do now with high-risk drivers, when assigning motor vehicle liability coverage. Of course, the rates would have to be kept affordable. Or, instead, we could have "standard major-medical plans that companies, or groups of companies, would have to write for specific higher-risk groups (e.g., diabetics) again, at affordable rates,” suggest Mr. Gallington. Alternatively, we could use a scheme with “low-cost coverages for routine preventive care for all school-age children,” suggests Mr. G. There would need to be provisions for major medical coverage with the stipulation that pre-existing conditions could not be denied. One last suggestion would be to create “a standardized, low-cost plan for routine and preventive prenatal, newborn and infant health care, again with major medical coverage,” also offered by Mr. G. He suggests that this need not be ‘rocket science’ and what a shame it is that we flounder so badly over such little things. We could have so much better. In summary, Mr. G. wraps it up by clarifying to us: “After all, the whole idea of [health] insurance is to use the actuarial "laws of large numbers" to make the costs of coverage easier to predict and manage - for both insured individuals and insurance carriers”.