Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Mass Success, Pt.2 -- Has it helped anybody?

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Addressing the first issue – providing health insurance for the target (those without health insurance): It was found that almost half of the uninsured are now covered. This, just within this first year! Not only that, but on the “care” side the plan has made significant gains in the percentage receiving “routine preventive care”. “Preventive” benefits are hard to quantify at the moment because we rarely realize what might have happened, but didn’t. We can, however, project inferences on long-time stable trends. Without significant change, patterns generally continue. It’s generally accepted by all, that preventive care is a very good thing. Over time, changing patterns will enable us to provide quantitative results of the preventive care. It is interesting to note that the declines from the residents “without health insurance” segment were, pretty-much across the board. No significant between those of lower/moderate income and those of higher income.

As to the second issue, the mass exodus away from conventional health insurance causing the industries to collapse and ruin our economy -- The Urban Institute has conducted studies on the matter. Look for them tomorrow in the journal Health affairs. What has been found is “no evidence that residents were dropping private health coverage“ in order to jump on the opportunity of the new state-subsidized plans. Further, it is noted that there is no indication that “employers viewed the availability of new public programs as a reason to eliminate” current employee health insurance benefits. So much for scare tactics. So far we’ve shown very impressive success in reaching a formidable percentage if the vast number of uninsured, and done it without wiping out the existing insurance industry.

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