Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Insurance Still Plummeting, Pt.7 – What is the real fix?

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Ms. Davenport-Ennis further explained that these scaled-down health insurance plans tend to cap expenditures for diagnostics and other needed services and treatments. “Affordable” health insurance plans also limit necessary drugs, both amount and type, thereby undercutting the aggressive treatment programs required by cancer patients. The caps are almost standard with these scaled-down health insurance plans. Particularly problematic are the radiation treatments. Radiation therapy is, pretty-much, standard with most of the cancer patients. Whereas typical therapy requires "six consecutive weeks of daily treatments," the standard cap is limited to only 12 to 15 treatments. So the patient has to cover the last 18 treatments out of their pockets or else not receive the treatments.

Alan Sager believes that cost controls are the major controversies in the equation of the problem. Mr. Sager is with Boston University's School of Public Health, where he is a professor of health policy and management. He explains that the problem is not that our nation is under-spending on health care, but the way it is being spent. With 16% of our GDP, we should easily be able to “extend adequate health insurance to all.” Since everyone wants it and should have it, it becomes expedient to “…[craft] durably affordable health care” in order to rebuild our economy. If we just keep on doing the same thing we will not fix the problem, but worsen it. We will only end up with greater and greater numbers of those with inadequate health insurance or no insurance at all. Meanwhile, our medical providers will continue to ‘over-serve’ those who need it least, but have good insurance. So far, any medical cost control gaining any political clout has been centered around politically palatable methods. Those proposals currently in political vogue won’t fix the problem. All the many improvements and efficiencies promoted won’t control costs to any significant degree. They only offer a “shallow political promise of containing costs without actually disrupting business as usual in health care.” This only translates to throwing more and more money to an insatiable medical industry. 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."