Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

2nd Opinion on Health Insurance reform, Pt.1 -- Industry Speaks Out

Here is a 2nd Opinion on Health Insurance reform, following yesterday’s announcement of the widely interesting plan purported by the Commonwealth Fund. This one, as reported by Kim Dixon (Reuters) provides an analysis based on viewpoints of some health industry sectors of our nation. These, largely reflecting the standpoint of health insurance providers and hospitals, have a rub with some of the proposals offered by the well-respected “Commonwealth” group , but also agree with others. In an effort to “drastically reduce the rolls of the masses who can’t afford today’s health insurance, the “Commonwealth” advises establishing a government entity (or “connector”) which will deliver low-priced plans to individuals and small businesses. As will be the case with anyone who dare attempt reform our nation’s current health care system, there is inevitable opposition. While everyone agrees something must be done, unanimous commonality seems to stop there. The premise of the “Commonwealth” is to spur and influence debate of health care reform and affect an opportunity for desired changes from our next president, come 2009. Quoting Karen Davis, President of the Commonwealth Fund and coauthor of their plan: "The U.S. is the only industrialized country that doesn't cover everyone."

According to polls designed to elicit values of our voting public toward the November election, some of the top concerns are the escalating costs of health insurance and the lack of feasible availability of health insurance to our some of our 47 million (about 15% of our population) citizens who state they can’t afford it and the many who are classed as uninsurable. The “Commonwealth” states that their focus of the is not to trash our largely employer-based system, but to build on it.

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