Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Insurance/Care Overhaul, Pt.3 – All but a few of us of us are being fleeced.

Previous…

In the small minority, only 16% of the responding adults felt that our present health insurance/care system was relatively ok and only required ‘minor reform’. But the, almost 90% remaining, felt more strongly about our current health insurance/care system and believed that we need “wider use of health information systems that could improve coordination between health providers,” as shared be Ms. Steenhuysen. As will be treated in greater detail below, the Commonwealth Fund is recommending “rewarding health providers for high quality care, and offering patients incentives for seeking out health providers that offer the best and most efficient care,’ again, shared by Ms. Steenhuysen. The crux of the ‘Commonwealth’ health insurance/care system advice deals with things like greater efficiency as well as holding the medical providers to greater accountability.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s ‘Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’ reports that the cost of health insurance premiums for employers and their employees in the private sector have doubled in the past ten years. This is largely attributed to the inherent inefficiencies in the current system. From their recent national survey, they discovered that the typical family health insurance premium had jumped from $4,954 back in 1996, all the way up to $11,381 in just tem years (2006). In that same period, individual health insurance plans jumped from $1,992 annually to $4,118.

The lion’s share of the increases was brunt by the employers. Employees, however, were not spared. The expense borne to the employee for a typical family health insurance plane rose from $1,275 in 1996 to the, more than double, figure of $2,890 by 2006, while those employees with typical individual health insurance plans leaped from $342 for the year of 1996 all the way $788 for the year 2006.

Continued…