Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health Insurance Fear vs. Other Fears, Pt.11 –- Back to Bipartisan

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If we had a health insurance/care system that was entirely under one roof, such as in Wyden's plan or Hacker's plan, implementing cost controls would be much easier. A large health insurer could serve as a benchmark. Then, greater incentives could be induced that would reward “best practices, with smart forms of cost sharing and incentives to only offer cost-effective treatments”, again, as Mr. Klein brings out. So measuring the risks, the basics of Hacker's structure have a reformist political logic and Wyden also risks running into the same fears that befouled the efforts that were attempted in 1994. By losing the employer-based health insurance/care system, Wyden risks of evoking the bias of voters and insurers for the natural status quo.

With Hacker's plan, at least the voters will see no change unless they volunteer for it. But with Wyden's plan, the majority will need to buy new health insurance. The key to all this is the hope of attracting more support from stakeholders to compensate for the political risk involved. These stakeholders would be employers who are willing to give up the headache of dealing with the health insurance/care industry and also the insured individuals who worry about losing what they already have in hand. On the subject of cost containment, the Wyden method's state agencies would need to define and regulate these new qualified plans. Even though this logic made sense in the 1993 proposal (managed competition) by the Clinton administration, it took a dive.

Not the least of these problems is that neither of these plans are in their idealized forms. Even worse, they would still have to survive the legislative process, veto by the White House, or being watered down by the plethora of special interest groups, never mind the attack ads. Hacker's plan would almost certainly come under vicious attach by some Republicans, diswaying as many votes as they could. On the other side, Wyden's plan could only survive with a Democratic president's strong support in order to attract enough liberals. One of the greatest obstacles would be to persuade voters to let go of their present health insurance/care coverage. Any meaningful reform is guaranteed to very rocky but even so, there is no other acceptable alternative…change must come.