Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Health-Care Contrasts, Pt.7 – $ for $, but not lb. for lb.

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Even though Mr. McCain’s focus is on providing better health insurance choices, Mr. Obama’s plan actually provides the more consumer health insurance options. These options, however, will be only be made possible through government regulation. The mechanism envisioned to enable these options is a newly-created ‘exchange’ (analogous to the ‘connector’, currently being successfully employed in the Massachusetts universal health insurance model).

Using this mechanism, the private health insurance companies would still offer coverage as they do now. But they would also find themselves competing with a large public health insurance entity. This new entity is the government plan.

In addition to this, Mr. O’s plan calls for the ‘guarenteed coverage’ mandate to include the ‘uninsurable’ segment, afore mentioned in article, ‘Pt. 5’ of this series. This mandate is designed to guarantee positive results by ensuring consistent prices. It’s not some ‘mamby-pamby’ proclamation like ‘Have a good day”. It would be very hard-fought to bring about. But it’s the most critical portion of the crises. Parents would be mandated to insure their children. The fabric of society is being asked to help tend its own garden. Large employers are being expected to help provide health insurance for their workers.

It must be stressed here that the focus of the Health Affairs report appears to have little to do with the actual crises. The view is based largely on political and economic ramifications. Therefore, if we remove the ‘utility value’ of providing affordable health insurance to 34 million Americans from the equation, we can see that Mr. O’s plan will cost a little more than Mr. Mc’s ($1.6 billion vs. $1.3 billion).

Continued…