Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

U.S. Rep Kagen  -- On Health Insurance Reform

What’s it called when a person with pre-existing conditions is denied health insurance coverage for that reason? Discrimination. This is the approach taken by U.S. Rep. Steve Kagen. He has recently introduced a health care bill in the House to revamp health insurance. By barring the insurance industry from rejecting applicants and standardizing prices, among other things, his bill intends to make health care affordable to all. Another related bill requiring price disclosure of prescription drugs is also expected. All this is intended to reduce that vary large discrepancy between the very wealthy and the poverty line.

With the health care reform issue escalating so quickly in the presidential race, issues like this are very likely to be closely scrutinized. The "unfair" and "discriminatory” aspects of the current health care system (and perhaps the Republican proposals, as well) are becoming forefront issues with many candidates, such as Kagen, Clinton and Obama, to name a few. Kagen calls this proposal, only the "first brick" in the critically needed reform of the current US health care system, by no means the final solution.

Kagen envisions his proposals can evolve back into the “community pooling” of decades ago. Back them, communities contracted health insurance plans for their entire community. As Kagen put it, "You lived within the community, you were in the risk pool." "As we create a larger risk pool, [like the region of a state], if we include everyone, we have a large purchasing pool. … You're going to get a skinny deal from everybody instead of a fat deal from a few."

Even though Kagen’s health care bill was introduced over two months ago, it still has not reached the House floor for discussion. Kagen explains, jokingly, about getting a bill passed in Congress… "It's kind of like the operating room." "The patient wants to know that in the end when it's all through they are going to look like themselves again. It's legislation. It can be a little distorted, but in the end we want the patient to survive, and we want the market place to leverage prices down for everyone."