Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Insurance/Care Overhaul, Pt.6 – Shop for quality, pay only for quality.

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So here are the explanations that the Commonwealth Fund has offered for their list of recommendations to resolve the health insurance/care crises. To start with, they recommend ‘payment reform’. This is touted to be a very effective deterrent from escalating the already spiraling out of control costs in our health insurance/care system. Already supported by both presidential candidates in their own health insurance/care proposals, they recommend changing the current (traditional) practice of charge-as-you-go (fee-for-service) to a system where health care providers are paid on a basis of high quality and also centered around the patients and their actual health care needs. The system suggested will coordinate actual needs with the after effect of the patient’s wellbeing.

The next topic in revamping our flawed health insurance/care system is concerning ‘patient incentives’. This need is predicated by the flawed perception of the patient that ‘everything is free’ due to the insulation the patient experiences because the employer’s contribution of the health insurance is picking up most of the tab. The revised system would put the patient closer to the reality of extraneous charges, racked up on the uninformed. This is designed as an incentive for patients to shop around more and to base their decisions of choice on “health care professionals and institutions that provide the most efficient, highest quality health care,” as the Science Daily News team phrases it. Before this can happen, though, the daunting task of creating a grading system on the medical providers would have to in place. Their grade score on quality of care and efficiency would need to be comprehensively rated. Then, those results would need to be made readily available to those patients making the choices.

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