Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

The Real Problem of Covering the ‘Uninsured’, Pt.9 – Effective results of a working model.

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One of the ‘scare tactics’ was that everyone in Massachusetts would dump their current, expensive private health insurance and flock over to the cheaper and better government-sponsored and regulated health insurance plans. Not only did that effect never materialize, but it turned out that Massachusetts actually performed better than all of the other states for growth in the private health insurance sector. In fact, it was the only state of all 50 which had positive growth.

One of the remaining challenges, which was anticipated, was cost and efficiency. Again, because of the unprecedented move to mandate universal health insurance/care, it was necessary to wait for the settling to stabilize in order to assess both the extent and the remedy. Remedy solutions are now being implemented. Three of the parameters that were expected to be problems were popular rejection and non-compliance to acquiring health insurance, tangible cost savings and tangible health benefits.

Acceptance and compliance were so high that accelerated participation caused funding strain. As the program advanced more rapidly than the funding schedule was adjusted for (part of the reason was that existing conditions were even worse that had been realized). The new general attitude that has emerged seemed a little perplexing at first. Many of the more than 600,000 who formerly had no health insurance now have an inner satisfaction and security that they are no longer ‘beggars’ but and justify demanding health care.

Tangible cost savings for the health insurance/care model were realized when the first major objective was reached. This was the problem of what Mitt Romney referred to as ‘free-riding’.

Continued…