Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Will Obama Health Care Prevail?, Pt.10 – The uphill road ahead.

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The tough balance for Mr. Obama’s final health insurance package  will be retaining effectiveness while still incorporating sustainable financing.  In terms of politics, these tend go in opposite directions.  Just like with education, many consider health insurance/care to be a luxury in the first place.  So they pass a law but provide no funding.  Some of the hot-spots will be things like adding financial incentives/de-incentives concerning health insurance payments.  Examples might be under-payment for unnecessarily expensive procedures and mandating lower co-pays for those patients who will practice preventative health care.  Tightening the belt on medical costs is where the ‘rubber-meets-the road’.  Where the ‘Washington – politics as usual’ meets a major challenge.  The softer approach will likely prevail, that is ‘pay-for-performance incentives’

As John Sheils of the Lewin Group suggests, the meatier negotiations are bound to reveal bitter disagreements between Republicans and Democrats.  There is a longstanding division over the role of the government regarding ‘social wisdom’, especially when it comes to in providing coverage to the 46 million Americans without health insurance and the 25 million with inadequate health insurance. 

Even though they’ve been proven to work in Massachusetts, employer mandates are certain to be another contention.  One of the more extreme situations pertains to the ‘uninsurable’.  These are the 15-million strong group who have chronic and/or pre-existing conditions.  Right now, they are almost always denied health insurance coverage for the treatments they need.  It’s very expensive.

The high-risk pools to which Mr. McCain so often referred have always been considered unusable without extraordinary funding.  Obama’s health insurance/care plan addresses the problem more directly but, is almost certain to encounter formidable barriers.  What it boils down to is the question:  ‘Are we ok, as a nation, to overlook the 20,000 Americans who will die every year for lack of health insurance?’

On the other side, there will be the new opportunities for both parties to compromise on issues like modernized health care administration and health information technology.  Sheils summarizes with:  "I think you should be prepared for the possibility that the plan that they'll come out with will be very different than what they've described here." 

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