Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Healthcare in the Forefront, Pt.4 – How does mandated health insurance stack up?

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So here’s the point so aptly shared by Ms. Bender, without a mandate for all citizens to carry health insurance (there will be extreme exceptions, of course) the “young and the healthy will opt out, leaving the older and sicker in the system.” As it has always done in the private health insurance business, this will add significant costs to the remaining health insurance premiums. I believe that Alan Sager of Boston University's School of Public Health, where he is a professor of health policy and management is right on the mark. Mr. Sager states “If we’re ever going to fix this problem, our citizens will have to “demand change and [solutions] that work financially, medically, ethically and politically." For more on Mr. Sager’s sound wisdom, I recommend reviewing one of my recent articles called “Health Insurance Still Plummeting”

In all fairness, I must point out that Mr. Obama is not completely devoid in this area. He does strongly promote employer-based health insurance, which does heavily integrate risk sharing. That’s a great step and a very necessary inclusion. A further favorable direction is that he draws heavily from the successful principles resulting from the Massachusetts ‘test laboratory’. They do mandate universal health insurance and have been a major hotbed of debate since conception. There was far more criticism then support nationwide until just recently when their first ‘report card’ came in. Astonishingly to many, nearly all of the criticisms fell away under pressure of proof. Like a ‘shooting-star’ production where far more people are drawn then expected, the main complaints were ‘overcrowding’ the auditorium. The first year of the Massachusetts health insurance reform was so well received that the system was pressed to support the rapid influx. In English, that means they found themselves ‘under funded’. With some creative innovation, however, they were able to survive the first onrush. The next boulder deals with assistance needed from the Bush Administration. Good luck. For a better understanding of the Massachusetts results, I recommend reading my recent series of articles called ”Mass Success".

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