What if California Had Passed Health Care Reform?

California lawmakers recently passed a budget that, at least on paper, may, perhaps close the $42 billion shortfall the state faces in this and the next fiscal year. The budget was due before July 2008. So it was a bit less than eight months overdue. One of the methods required to close the gap was to reduce funding to some of the state’s neediest citizens.

Lawmakers inability to find a budget compromise in a timely fashion and in such a cruel fashion speaks volumes about a dangerous and dysfunctional political system. It brings into question whether California lawmakers can be trusted with something as critical to its citizens as the nature of its health care system, which would have happened had California enacted Assembly Bill X1-1 last year. Given the state’s current economic and political problems, what would have happened had health care reform passed in early 2009?

ABX1-1, you may recall, passed the Assembly, was supported by the Governor, but was defeated in the Senate early last year. A major reason for its demise was a Legislative Analyst’s Office Report on ABX1-1 that raised serious concerns about the state’s ability to implement the reform package within the $14 billion price tag touted by its supporters, primarily Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. then Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and then President Pro Tem Don Perata. Using what it considered to be optimistic assumptions of the bill’s sponsors, the LAO concluded the plan would be running a deficit of $300 million. Using more conservative (and what the LAO called, more realistic assumptions), it estimated the health care plan would be running a deficit of $1.5 billion in it’s fifth year and have run up a cumulative deficit of $4 billion during it’s first half-decade of operation.

Supporters of the health care reform bill protested that the LAO report underestimated savings from fixing the state’s broken health care system. They relied on a study conducted by professor Jonathan Gruber of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that demonstrated the reform package was a net financial plus for the state.

Yet the Gruber report made some questionable assumptions. The LAO report noted, for example, that the Gruber model “is not designed to estimate the effects of an economic slowdown on population responses” to the various elements of the reform.”  Translation:  if the economy tanks the Gruber analysis doesn’t work. That’s because, according to the LAO report, ABX1-1’s proponents assumed then current growth rates would continue over time. “For example, the cost of expanding Medi-Cal to adults was grown at the projected growth rate for current Medi-Cal expenses, while the wage-based employer fee was projected to grow at the projected growth rate for wages.”

But tank the economy did (and has). Time and again, the LAO report, delivered to the Legislature on January 22, 2008, warned against the danger of mis-predicting the future. “California is subject periodically to slowdowns in economic activity. During these times, unemployment often increases. This reduces the number of Californians with access to employer-provided healthcare. A recession similar to the one California experienced in the early 1990s could result in hundreds of thousands of Californians losing access to employer-provided health care, thereby increasing the costs for the [health care reform] plan.”

Statistics published by the California Economic Development Department puts this into context. In January 2008, when the LAO report was published, the state’s unemployment rate had been below six percent for three years, dipping below five percent in 2006. This compares to the state’s unemployment rate during the 1990s recession of more than nine percent during most of 1992 and 1993, peaking during several months at 9.9 percent. California’s current unemployment, at least during January 2009, was 10.1 percent. The worst case scenario the LAO warned against has arrived.

I don’t bring all this up to deny the need for substantial health care reform. For the state and national economies to recover sooner-than-later, substantial changes to the health care system are necessary. In times of economic dislocation like we are experiencing now, the human need for change in health care is especially acute and poignant. Unemployment is about more than data and statistics, it’s about neighbors and families in pain.

Nor am I raising this issue to gloat over the failure of ABX1-1. A number of the reforms contained in that legislation would have significantly improved California’s health care system.

These statistics, however, point to several truths:

1. Predicting the future is hard, if not impossible. Any reform package has to make assumptions about the economic environment years from now. And most likely, those estimates will be wrong.
2. Meaningful health care reform must come from the federal government — state’s simply aren’t equipped to deal with it. This isn’t to say there aren’t good ideas emerging from the states. But they lack the tools needed to deal with unexpected problems. As California has ably demonstrated, states do a poor job of facing economic challenges. They can’t deficit spend. The federal government has a tough time influencing the economy; states simply can’t.

Think about the budget drama of the past eight months. Now think about a health care structure upon which the state’s residents depends being subject to this horrendous display of chaos. It’s more than scary. It’s a nightmare that eventually California — or any state — will likely face if it tries to tackle the complex issues of comprehensive health care reform aimed at achieving anything close to universal coverage. Until states can print money, they will be incapable of shepherding their health systems through economic times like these.

America’s economy will recover. It’s only a matter of time and hard work. The nation’s health care system can be reformed into a truly American-style system that achieves universal — or nearly universal — coverage. It’s also a matter of time, hard work as well as of smart politics able to find common ground among competing factions. It won’t be easy, but it can be done.

No one during the debate over ABX1-1 could have anticipated what’s happened to the economy. The LAO warned against the potential, but even they did not declare this situation likely. Yet here we are. If ABX1-1 had passed the California fiscal crisis would be even worse than it is. And the state’s lawmakers would have been unable to face the challenge.

Quarter of Legislature Missed California’s Year of Health Care Reform

One day the politicans in Sacramento may pass a budget. Once (if?) that happens, lawmakers will turn their attention to, well, making laws. And some of those laws will impact health care coverage in California.

A lot of progress was made during the Year of Health Care Reform (2007 and a bit of 2008). The debate was intense and comprehensive reform nearly passed. It was approved by the State Assembly and supported by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, but defeated in the State Senate. The new debate is likely to start somewhere near where the last one ended.

For many legislators, however, the health care debate will be somewhat a matter of first impression. Of the 11 new Senators, all previously served in the Assembly. And of the 28 new Assembly Members, two have previously served in the Senate. However, four of the new Senators and one of the freshman AssemblyMembers were out of office during at least since 2006. So they missed all the educational opportunities the Year of Health Care Reform offered.

Needless to say there’s a lot of interested parties seeking to bring them up to speed. And California isn’t the only state where newbie lawmakers need to figure out how the current health care system works before they start in on messing with it. One resource they’ll have is the 2009 State Legislators’ Guide to Health Insurance Solutions and Glossary published by the Council for Affordable Health Insurance and the American Legislative Exchange Council. (My thanks to agent Bruce Jugan for bringing this Guide to my attention). CAHI is an insurance industry group so, guess what? Yep, it’s got a spin to it. Meaning few wil agree with everything it says (I don’t).

Nonetheless it’s an interesting overview of health care reform issues at a very high level. The Guide is not state specific, so it won’t fill in the gaps for legislators looking for a refresher course on California’s recent debate, but that lack of specificity is also a plus. The high-level perspective provides a good foundation for understanding the broad outlines of the issue. And the glossary is very handy.

If anyone out there knows of similar guides, but from other perspectives, please send them my way. Understanding the upcoming health care reform debate requires an understanding of how lawmakers think about the issue. And to understand that it can’t hurt to read what they are reading. Or at least, what they should be reading.

Baucus Health Care Reform Plan an Interesting Start

Comprehensive national health care reform is coming. The only question is when and what wil it look like. There will be many reform plans put forward during this process. Some will have more substance than others. Some will be more credible than others. Some may even be practical. And a few might make America’s health care system better, not worse, than it is today.

One thing we know pretty much for certain is that a true single payer system is not coming any time soon. President-elect Barack Obama made comprehensive health care reform a central theme to his campaign. it clear throughout his campaign that he saw an important role for the private sector in the country’s future health care system. The Democratic National Platform made this approach explicit. (Irrelevant factoid: this post could well be the one and only time you ever read anyone referring to a party platform — until 2012).

What’s less certain is whether health care reform will be taken up by the Obama White House and/or Congress in the first few months of the new Administration. There are certainly a lot of influential lawmakers seeking to make health care reform an initial priority, including Senator Max Baucus, Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, and Senator Ted Kennedy, Chair of the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. There’s more already entered in this particular derby and many more to come.

Senator Baucus’ health care reform plan is interesting for several reasons. First, any reform package will need to pass through his Finance Committee. Whether it’s his bill or another’s, Senator Baucus will have the ability to influence the final package. Understanding his starting point, consequently, takes on special significance.

Second, Senator Baucus’ plan, which he notes is not intended to be a legislative proposal, but rather a blueprint describing his vision for health care reform, devotes considerable attention to the need to reduce the underlying cost of medical care at great length. Even his discussion of wellness, preventive care, transparency, and reducing waste — standard components of any credible reform plan — goes well beyond the normal discussion. Most significantly, he goes beyond the low hanging fruit to address more controversial approaches. For example, he calls for financial incentives for primary care providers in the Medicare system and suggests funding them by reducing payments to specialists. He also endorses using medicare to test other primary care models especially those that “promote comprehensive care management and coordination, particularly for the chronically ill.”

Third, while the market reforms included in Senator Baucus’ plan should be no surprise to anyone who listened to Senator Obama during the presidential campaign, it does provide more specificity than was offered during the election. So while it contains the expected laundry list of proposals (tax credits, guarantee issue, etc.) it’s the additional details he provides that are significant.

For example, most insurance agents who read this blog will want to know what role, if any, they will have in the government-run Health Insurance Exchange Senator Baucus would create to compete with private sector offerings. A hint is all he provides, but it’s an encouraging one. In the discussion of the proposed purchasing pool, the document states “Plans participating in the Exchange would be subject to oversight by states with regard to consumer protections (e.g., grievance procedures, external review, oversight of agent practices and training, market conduct). ” italics added.

States are to regulate agent practices in connection with the pool. That must mean Senator Baucus envisions some role for agents in connection with the pool. As noted, it’s only a hint, but it’s a welcome one.

During the debate over Assembly Bill X1-1 earlier this year, carriers and agents were able to insert language in the legislation to allow, but not require, agents to sell products offered through the purchasing pool it would have created. Whether agents can educate lawmakers at the national level that the services we provide are worth including and protecting in whatever reforms eventually emerge will be challenging. But it appears Senator Baucus, at least, is open to the idea. And the experience agents have gained in California and elsewhere should aid in this effort.

No one, not even Senator Baucus, assumes his blueprint will be adopted as is. There will be a long and contentious health care reform debate before any kind of consensus emerges. Senator Baucus’ proposal is an important contribution to the stew of ideas that is simmering in the nation’s Capital. It’s an interesting start. But only a start.

Do Schwarzenegger Vetoes Signal a Push for Comprehensive Reform in 2009?

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed a host of health care reform bills on Tuesday. Some of them were to be expected. For example, he struck down Senate Bill 840, Senator Sheila Keuhl’s attempt to create a government-run, single payer system in the state. The Governor has been on record as opposing this approach for years and has vetoed the concept in the past. His vetoes of several bills requiring medical plans to include coverage for certain conditions is also consistent with his previously stated opposition to coverage mandates.

But there were lots of surprises on the list, too. Governor Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation that would have made it far more difficult for carriers to insurance companies to rescind an insured once they’ve accepted an application for individual or family coverage (Assembly Bill 1945 by Assemblyman Hector De La Torre. No carrier practice has garnered more negative press — and bigger fines — than rescission. From a political point of view, AB 1945 was a soft ball. Yet Governor Schwarzenegger struck it down.

He vetoed legislation (Senate Bill 1440 by Senator Keuhl) to compel carriers to spend 85 percent of the premium they take in on medical care — even though this concept was contained in the unsuccessful comprehensive health care reform package the Governor was pushing for last year. The same fate befell Senate Bill 973 by Senator Joe Simitian that would have created a statewide public insurer to link together existing regional and county-based health plans even though it too was similar to a portion of the Governor’s own reform plan.

Governor Schwarzenegger’s veto of Assembly Bill 2 by Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally was especially surprising. It would have expanded the ability of the state’s existing high risk pool to help more Californians unable to qualify for coverage in the private marketplace due to pre-existing health conditions.  The program needs significant help to continue to meet its mission. He also vetoed Senate Bill 981 by Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata which would have prohibited “balance billing” by doctors and other care providers.

The Governor had his reasons for keeping these bills from becoming law. His veto message concerning AB 1945 deplored the practice of unfair rescission and listed consumer-protection provisions he would want to see in legislation dealing with the issue. But he noted that AB 1945 was “written by the attorneys that stand to benefit from its provisions” and would lead to unwarranted litigation. Similarly, he preferred a different solution to the problem of balance billing than the approach embodied in SB 981.

Vetoes of this type, over approaches to solving problems, are common. They represent legitimate policy and political differences. The Legislature, for example, considered several bills addressing recission. They could have worked with the Governor’s office to fashion a compromise that he would sign. That didn’t happen. The veto did.

But it’s Governor Schwarzenegger’s rationale for vetoing AB 2, SB 1440, and SB 973 that best illuminates what’s in store for California concerning heatlh care reform. In all three of his veto messages, Governor Schwarzenegger made clear he wants comprehensive health care reform. Piecemeal and incremental changes are unacceptable.

I’ve written previously about why state health care reform efforts usually fail. In my mind, meaningful and comprehensive reform will need to come from Washington. And while enacting such reform has been greatly complicated by the current financial crisis, it still remains near the top of the domestic agendas for both Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama.

If the new Congress and the next Administration succeed in enacting dramatic health care reforms, it could preempt laws and regulations at the state level. To me, this suggests the efforts of California’s leaders might best be spent in helping to shape what happens in Washington, DC. Governor Schwarzenegger apparently disagrees.

Governor Schwarzenegger’s vetoes make clear he intends to pursue a California solution. It’s not just what the veto messages say, it’s their political impact that is important. They keep pressure on lawmakers to enact substantial reform. His opponents, for example, will be unable to call for a “time out” on further changes to the system while the new laws are given a chance to work. His allies, while angry at the vetoes, will work all the harder to get their pet reforms enacted.

In some significant ways, the potential for success is greater in 2009 than it was in 2008. Governor Schwarzenegger will be negotiating with a new cast of Legislative Leaders.  He will will be working with a relatively new Legislature, many of whom will have no scars with from his previous effort. Yet, unlike in 2007 when he launched the Year of Health Care Reform, a year in which, for most of it, the Governor offered only general principals, in 2009 he can use his defeated reform legislation, Assembly Bill X1-1, as a detailed starting point.

Certainly, the task won’t be easy. It may even be impossible. The state’s finances are in shambles and health care reform is expensive.

But there’s a legacy to be attended to. Plus, the Governor does not like to lose and the defeat of ABX1-1 was both visible and painful. His vetoes are a clear signal of where he’s headed. Expect 2009 to be the Year of Health Care Reform. Again.

Single Payer Losing Ground

This should be the best of times for advocates of a single payer health care system in America. The environment for radical change has never been better. After years of hammering at problems in the current system, there is general agreement on the need for substantial change. When asked what single issue will most impact their vote for president, a substantial number of voters have consistently cited health care according to the Kaiser Health Tracking Polls. For example, in the August 2008 survey, 16% cited health care as their determinative issue, ranking this concern behind only the Economy (49%), Iraq (25%) and and Gas Prices 18%). Significantly, health care reform is a critical part of the economy and 24% of the respondents said paying for health care and health insurance was a serious problem. 

Meanwhile, legislation to create a single payer system has been introduced in Congress and several states. In California, the Legislature passed a bill to create a state-run health plan:(Senate Bill 840 by Senator Sheila Kuehl. (It currently is awaiting a veto by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger).

Given all this momentum for radical change, you would think a government-run system would be a major issue in the presidential campaign, yet it’s not. Clearly, Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee is not going to support a single payer system. What’s significant, however, is that Democrats are not advocating this approach either. Neither the Democratic nominee, Senator Barack Obama. nor his chief rival through the primary season, Senator Hillary Clinton, called for a government takeover of America’s health care system. Even the Democratic Party platform rejects a single payer system.

The 2008 Democratic National Platform, Renewing America’s Promise, gives its approach to heath care reform considerable prominence. Here’s some meaningful excerpts from the document:

“Democrats are united around a commitment that every American man, woman and child be guaranteed affordable, comprehensive healthcare.”

“Our vision includes: Covering All Americans and Providing Real Choices of Affordable Health Insurance Options.  Families and individuals should have the option of keeping the coverage they have or choosing from a wide array of health insurance plans, including many private health insurance options and a public plan. Coverage should be made affordable for all Americans with subsidies provided through tax credits and other means.”

“Shared Responsibility. health care should be a shared responsibility between employers, workers, insurers, providers and government. All Americans should have coverage they can afford; employers should have incentives to provide coverage to their workers; insurers and providers should ensure high quality affordable care; and the government should ensure that health insurance is affordable and provides meaningful coverage. As affordable coverage is made available, individuals should purchase health insurance and take steps to lead healthy lives.”

“Meaningful Benefits. Families should have health insurance coverage similar to what Members of Congress enjoy.”

This is not the language of single payer advocates. Yes, the Democrats call for coverage for all Americans that is “similar to what Members of Congress enjoy.” And they want to protect Americans from “the burden of skyrocketing premiums, unaffordable deductibles or benefit limits that leave them at financial risk when they become sick.” So we’re not talking about a “hands-off” approach here.

But we’re also not talking about a single payer system. Advocates of SB 840 claim as one of its chief benefits the elimination of health insurers and HMOs. That’s a long way from the platform’s call for “keeping private health insurance options” available.

There will be robust debate in Washington concerning health care reform. As I’ve written previously, a bipartisan coalition of Senators is waiting for the new president with their own health care reform package. Single Payer advocates are not going away. They will throw their proposals into the mix, but this won’t change the reality: the Democratic nominee and his party’s platform have rejected the single payer approach.

So here’s the question: if single payer advocates can’t win when the political stars are so strongly aligned in their favor, will they ever win?

My take is that the stars are realigning in such a way to make the answer a resounding “no.” Over the next two-to-four years there is a real possibility that Congress and the new president will pass meaningful, comprehensive health care reform. That’s another two-to-four years in which the cracks in existing single payer systems around the world will deepen, broaden and become more apparent. Faced with a new alternative to what will increasingly be seen as a nonviable approach at hand being rolled out, single payer advocates won’t go away, but they won’t be successful either.

The Need to Do Something — But SB 1440 Isn’t It

We elect politicians to solve problems. That’s their job. It’s what we pay them for. No one campaigns for office proclaiming their intent to accomplish nothing. There’s always some injustice to right. There’s always a mess to fix. So no one should be surprised that current lawmakers in Sacramento are desperate to do something about California’s health care system. After all, there are real problems in the current system.

But there’s a difference between lawmakers really addressing problems and simply looking like their addressing problems. Take Senate Bill 1440 authored by Senator Shiela Keuhl. The bill would require carriers to spend 85 percent of the premium they take in on medical care. As originally introduced, SB 1440 would have had a devastating impact on the individual health insurance market. It would have increased costs, decreased competition and made it nearly impossible for independent agents to assist consumers in finding the right plan for their needs.

Fortunately, SB 1440 has been substantially amended since its original introduction. As it reads today, the biggest problem with the bill is it requires carriers to segregate their Department of Managed Care regulated plans from those regulated by the Department of Insurance. While it’s not surprising regulators and legislators perceive these plans to be worthy of distinction, from a consumer’s point of view it’s a meaningless difference. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senator Keuhl should address this issue in their negotiations concerning the legislation. But that’s not the overriding problem with SB 1440.

What’s wrong with SB 1440 is that it won’t lower premiums, which is the stated purpose of the bill. The Rand Corporation in a report by Neeraj Sood and Eric Sun titled “Health Insurance Premiums in California: The Role of Administrative Cost and Profits” examined the results of similar legislation in other states. They found states with no Medical Loss Ration legislation spend statistically the same percentage of premium as those that regulated the entire market (83 percent and 84 percent, respectively). While it’s true that states limiting the loss ratio of all coverage (individual, small group and large group) set targets at levels lower than the 85 percent called for by SB 1440, the report suggests consumers are unlikely to benefit from any premium savings.

The reason is that profits and administrative costs aren’t the problem with skyrocketing health care costs; it’s the price of medical treatment that drives premiums. The study found that 85 percent of the increase in revenue per enrollee between 2002 and 2006 was the result of medical costs.

Lawmakers could address 85 percent of the problem. But that’s hard work. It requires examining the drivers of increased medical costs and making tough decisions on how to reduce their rate of increase. It’s far easier (if less impactful) to go after health insurance companies and HMOs. Never mind that, as reported by the Rand study, the profits of California HMOs are less than the profitability of the companies comprising the S&P 500. The reality is that, along with oil and tobacco companies, they are about as easy a political target as exists.

So lawmakers will pass SB 1440 and declare a blow against rising insurance premiums. They may not be able to pass a budget, but they can teach those insurance companies a lesson. The fact that the legislation won’t have much, if any, impact on premiums is irrelevant. The fact that it won’t bring medical inflation down to general inflation levels doesn’t matter.

Because while we pay them for results, we have a tendency to elect lawmakers based on appearances. Which means the underlying problem remains.

Individual Coverage an Endangered Species?

I know I said I wouldn’t be posting anything for awhile, but recent articles could be indications that private market individual medical insurance could be a candidate for the endangered species list. Which is a shame because individual coverage offers consumers some major advantages over the alternative. Fortunately, some of the threats to the future of this market may hold the seeds of a brighter future.

Take for instance, the intent of Congressman Henry Waxman, Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that “the individual market demanded more scrutiny, especially of cancellation practices,” as reported by Lisa Girion in the Los Angeles Times. The fact is, the way carriers handled their rescission powers have hurt innocent members, undermined their own credibility and battered whatever good will they might have possessed.

What’s ironic is that carriers rarely invoke their rescission rights. Consequently, whatever carriers gained in using it to fight fraud has been more than offset by the political damage they’ve taken.

Which brings us to Congressman Waxman’s hearings. Congressman Waxman is one of the House’s brightest members. He is passionate and committed to fighting injustice. His hearing will be thorough and, considering the political context of these things, fair. All sides will be heard and, with luck, some good might come of it. But it certainly will be a grilling causing strong insurance executives to sweat and bring weak ones to the verge of nervous breakdowns. Taking the oath before the Committee is not anything a CEO looks forward to: just ask all those former tobacco CEOs Congressman Waxman humbled a few years ago.

The real danger, however, is not the reputations of a few CEOs, but what “reforms” might emerge from the hearings. A lot of people simply don’t like individual coverage. They believe the carriers have too great an advantage in the transaction. To them, baring a government takeover of the health insurance system, the only other option is having the government micro manage the market.

Yet government micromanagement will inevitably lead a blander market of vanilla coverage and reduced choice. That’s what’s happened when states have intervened to create purchasing pools for consumers. While the pools have generally failed to lower the the cost of coverage, they have succeeded in limiting consumer choice.

Yet it’s the flexibility of the individual market that is one of its greatest strengths (along with its availability being independent of one’s job). Choice in the individual market makes it easier to find a solution for consumers’ unique needs. And those needs do differ. Ask a 22 year old fresh out-of-college and a recently retired 60 year old what they need from their health insurance. It will quickly become clear health insurance is not a product where one size fits all.

Increased flexibility brings the potential to lower costs, making coverage more accessible for more consumers. In short, there’s a lot of benefits to the individual market. It would be a shame if mistakes carriers made involving recessions results in over regulating the market. That’s could happen soon in California. Along with several rescission bills, legislation to regulate the kind of plan designs carriers can offer is moving forward. SB 1522, authored by incoming President Pro Tem Senator Darrell Steinberg is currently on the Assembly Appropriation Committee’s Suspense File. Which means it’s ready to be passed if the Legislature ever resolves the budget impasse.

I’ve written previously about problems with the bill’s specifics. Beyond those, the legislation also is symbolic of lawmakers’ desire and willingness to insert themselves into the market at a very granular level. It’s not a long leap from defining what policies must be offered to regulating their price, distribution and implementation.

So where’s the silver lining in all this? Individual coverage rules and regulations vary widely from state-to-state. This means consumer protections vary widely across state boundaries. It also reduces competition in some states. Senator John McCain and others propose to address this by allowing policies approved in one state to be sold in any state. This approach, however, would result in a disastrous dash by carriers to file their products in the states with the most lenient rules and the laxest enforcement.

Congressman Waxman’s hearings, however, could lead to a different solution: national standards establishing a credible structure to enable policies to be sold nationally. These structure would, ideally, bring increased credibility to the individual market without diminishing consumer choice.

OK, it’s a long shot. And it may only replace the spectre of over-regulation by state lawmakers with the danger of over-regulation by federal lawmakers.

But, hey, I only claimed it was the lining. But sometimes that’s all endangered species can hope for.

SB 1522: Political Judgment versus the Wisdom of Crowds

I guess the theory is that regulators know perfection when they see it. And have the wisdom and detachment from mundane concerns like politics and pressure to deliver it. At least that seems to be the thinking behind Senate Bill 1522.

Under this legislation, introduced by Senator Darrell Steinberg, California regulators would establish five classes of individual health plans. The bill requires these categories to would gracefully arc from low cost (and, presumably, lower benefit) plans to higher cost (and higher benefit) offerings. All medical plans would need to fit into the five defined categories.

Supporters claim this approach will allow consumers to make apple-to-apple comparisons among plans. Todays market, they argue, is too confusing. Consumers are hard pressed to select from the dozens of options before them which one suits their needs the best. (As discussed below, they never seem to mention the availability of professional agents to help consumers make these choices — that would undermine the need for this particular solution).

Supporters are also concerned about risk segmentation. Their concern is that healthier individuals gravitate to lower cost plans and their less healthy neighbors rush to buy richer benefits at a higher cost. As a result, those high end plans get more expensive more quickly.

The arguments in favor of SB 1522 are not without merit. But that doesn’t mean the bill deserves passage — at least not in its current form.

The trade-off for simplifying the market is eradicating choice. If all medical plans have to fit into prescribed categories, innovation and improvements in terms of plan design goes away.

Imagine what would have happened if in the 1980s government regulators defined five categories of cars. No other vehicles would be available to consumers. The political battles between groups advocating inclusion of their pet enhancement would be fun to watch. Muscle car enthusiasts would be pitted against gas mileage advocates. Proponents of big trunk space would duke it out against those pushing for smaller cars (the better to fit them into those “compact” parking spaces just coming into vogue. 

The battles would be fierce and there would be winners and losers. One thing for certain: the cars of today would look pretty much like those of the 1980s. And whether hybrids or other offerings unanticipated 20 years ago would have emerged is uncertain. Instead, choice would be determined by the political winds blowing through Sacramento at the time. The influence of the market would be secondary at best, and perhaps marginal.

Which makes no sense. The market is the collective decisions of millions of consumers. It’s the wisdom of crowds. Proponents of SB 1522 would replace that wisdom with the judgement of politicians and their appointees.

The problem of risk segmentation is serious. Unfortunately, SB 1522 does little to solve it. The segmentation will still exist, just within the confines of the five categories. Unless the regulators cram the tiers together into minor variations on a single theme, there’s going to be significant differences between the rates and benefits along the regulated continuum. Consumers will gravitate to the one that makes the most sense for their needs. Supporters of SB 1522 claim there will be substantial differences between the tiers, but if so, then the bill won’t solve the segmentation challenge.

SB 1522 is flawed, but it’s likely to pass (whether the Governor will sign it in its present form is unknown — at least by me). Its author, Senator Steinberg, is the President Pro Tem in Waiting.  That makes it extremely difficult for lawmakers to challenge his proposals. This is the pre-honeymoon stage of his ascension during which everyone makes nice. Voting no is not generally considered to be an effective way to make nice.

But perhaps some lawmakers will step forward and offer ways to improve the bill. For example, there’s no need to make the five categories defined by regulators exclusive. Carriers could be required to offer at least one plan in each category, but still remain free to offer coverage outside those tiers. This would allow easier comparison for some offerings while maintaining a market that delivers choice, diversity and innovation. It would also provide useful feedback to the regulators. If consumers consistently choose plans outside the defined tiers, they would know corrective action is required.

Can consumers be trusted to handle a diverse marketplace offering innovative choices? Will they always make the right choice? There’s no guarantees. Even if the government eliminates a great deal of the diversity in the marketplace, consumers may make the wrong decision.

But there’s already a resource available to those looking for the right health insurance plan: independent agents. Professional agents understand the language. They can explain the trade-offs between Plan A and Plan B. They can get to know the prospect and help them explore their choices. They can even help them through the application process and help with any problems arising after the sale.

Choice can be daunting, but it can also lead to innovation and help the system evolve as needs, expectations and desires change. Helping consumers find the plans that best fit their needs is something better left to shoppers and their agents than to a political process. Just ask anyone driving a Prius.

 

Making it Simpler: Reinventing Individual Health Insurance

KISS, as a business imperative, is cited so often it’s passed beyond cliché to become background noise. Keep It Simple Stupid, however, is more of an illusive ideal than a comfortable accomplishment for most businesses. The individual health insurance industry is no exception – yet it needs to be.

 

Consumers buying medical coverage for themselves and their families lack the support network larger enterprises have. They (hopefully) are working with an independent insurance agent who understands their needs and knows the way through the maze of getting coverage, fixing billing problems or getting claims paid. But there’s no human resources department in the living room or colleagues to call upon for help in the kitchen. Worse, for those without an agent, there’s often no one to call for help than the carrier itself.

 

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Many people working in carriers’ membership service departments are quite good – once you get past the dreaded phone system. (I just dealt with a customer service rep at the health plan for my small business who solved the problem in one phone call – and was nice about it to boot).

 

The thing is, however, if you need to call for help, then something isn’t working right. Getting health insurance shouldn’t be complicated. Neither should understanding bills or explanations of benefits (EOBs). And doctors and hospitals shouldn’t have to devote so much resources and time into their interactions with health plans.

 

If Google can make searching the web clean and simple, if Apple can make a cell phone/music player/ PDA elegant and straightforward, if Visa and Mastercard can present payment histories in a relatively easy to understand manner, if Southwest can make booking a flight a breeze, then certainly health plans could simplify their processes.

 

A place to start would be with the products themselves. Each carrier describes their benefits in their own terms. Surely there’s a best practice for this kind of thing, but every carrier has its own unique and often idiosyncratic method. The result: agents (and their clients) devote hours to creating their own apples-to-apples comparisons.

 

There are the conspiracy theorists out there who believe this is done to make it more difficult for consumers to understand what they’re buying. I believe their wrong: why assume bad intent when indifference or incompetence explains the situation? When it comes to presenting benefits I think it’s more a case of an inward orientation with a dash of pride of authorship thrown in.

 

Or take provider directories. Many have moved online, but again, there’s a best practice out there that would make finding your doctor even easier. Or claim forms. Every doctor I see (and at my age it’s more than one, now) complains about the paper work. There have been efforts to move claim submittals online, but the problems with the process are more than technical. There’s also a need to simply make the process simpler. There’s a place for uniqueness. Commodity material is rarely that place.

 

Instead, the focus needs to be on something somewhat foreign to most health plans: design. Design has become a hot business concept. Magazines like Fast Company, Inc., Fortune fawn over the concept and those who excel at it. Products like iPods and half the house wares at Target are held up as icons of a new business paradigm.

 

Yet design shouldn’t be the sole purview of gadget manufacturers or fashion designers. Processes can be well designed, too; so can forms. But good design will only come to the work flows and materials of health plans if it’s a priority of their leadership. And that takes some courage. It’s not easy to make being easy a corporate priority, especially when your industry is under fire.

 

Yet those attacks can be seen as a motivator for simplification, too. For example, individual health plans are going to have change the way they underwrite applications. Their ability to discover fraudulent applications is going to be extremely limited once lawmakers get done reforming the rescission process. With no back-up, the importance of underwriting at the front-end becomes even more critical than it already is.

 

This is a great opportunity to make enrollment applications simpler. Again, there are those who claim the applications are complicated to enable carriers to play “gotcha” with their members who later incur claims. They have no facts to back this up, but that hardly matters, especially when these critics get a lot of attention just for making the claim. Which means carriers are going to have to deal with this charge for quite awhile – or until something changes.

 

(What’s more likely to blame for complex applications is the same dynamic that haunts anything created by committee. When lawyers, underwriters, actuaries, and business managers sit down to create a form – especially one that needs to meet regulatory standards – that form is going to be bloated, complicated and annoying. No ulterior motive is required.)

 

Instead of spending time repeatedly repudiating the charge, however, health plans would be better served to move beyond it. The fact is, applications are more cumbersome and complicated than they should be. Carriers should work with their Departments of Insurance and an outside design consultant to come up with standardized and, even more importantly, simplified underwriting forms. The forms should focus on making it as easy as possible for consumers to provide enough information for the carriers to make their underwriting decisions.

 

And that should be the explicit goal: easy sufficiency. This, in turn, means using simple language in a clear, concise manner. It means laying out the questions in a manner that flows and avoids asking for the same information repeatedly. It’s a lot easier to describe than do (I know, I tried once), but if made a priority, it’s doable.

 

When lawmakers, prosecutors and others are lobbing grenades your way it might be counter-intuitive to use the situation to focus on design. In reality, simplifying the touch points where consumers, agents and medical providers interact with the carrier is an extremely visible way of demonstrating a commitment to change. As important, it’s a vehicle for getting in front of the change that is inevitable.

Executing the Basics: Reinventing Individual Health Insurance

The best strategy in the game, the most inspiring vision in the industry means nothing without execution. And if an organization isn’t executing the basic components of the business, implementing something fancy — culture change, a new business model — isn’t going to get very far.

Executing the basics is the least exciting critical component of any successful business. By definition, a successful business has proven itself. It’s an ongoing concern. Leaders like to lead and that usually involves moving in new, more exciting directions. Over time, attention to the nuts and bolts can wane. The basics become a source for savings. The attention moves from serving the customer to an internal focus on efficiency. After all, resources need to be freed up to fund those new initiatives.

In the context of individual health insurance, the basics include processing applications, issuing bills, paying claims, contracting with doctors, appointing agents, and answering the phone. Most carriers do an adequate job on these items most of the time. All carriers do a lousy job on some of these at some time. Those osciallations in performance are normal and to be expected. What’s unacceptable is that “adequate” is, well, acceptable. Carriers will talk about delivering first class customer service, being partners with their providers and producers, but few, if any, consistently succeed.

The problem, I believe, is two-fold: an inability to measure the return on investment of better service; and an unwillingness for competitors to cooperate.

Providing services, whether it’s underwriting applications, answering questions from insureds and their physicians, or paying commissions, costs money. These dollars can be measured, tallied and monitored. Given the need to keep coverage affordable, the appropriate goal for carriers is to provide these services as efficiently (meaning at the lowest cost) as possible.

These services also have benefits in the form of customer satisfaction, increased efficiencies at the partner level (less time spent in doctors offices tracking down an answer freeing up more time to work with patients), and a negative public image. The problem is that dollars are a lot easier to track than satisfaction or efficiency in someone else’s office. So when carriers do a cost benefit analysis on a new IVR system (IVRs are those automated “press 1″ or “say ‘billing’” phone routing systems) they can measure the savings in personnel costs, but they lack the tools to measure the increased frustration members feel when unable to make the artificial (un)intelligence get them to the right place.

Health plans aren’t the only industry with frustrating phone systems. Sprint, AT&T, Time Warner, DirecTV and Verizon are a few others with IVRs deserving of a shout-out — or shut down, depending on your point of view. But cable and phone utilities are not the standard to which carriers should hold themselves. Nor should the standard be Nordstrom or Starbucks. It should be what consumers define as good customer service, doctors define as good physician service, and producers define as good agent service.

Carriers need to examine their basic operations from the consumer point of view. They need to define customer expectations and then think about ways to deliver those services in a cost-effective way that meets those expectations.

This means shifting the focus from an internal point-of-view to one that looks at operations through the eyes of the consumer (or physician or agent). This isn’t hard: every officer in every health plan should be required to call their customer service departments on a monthly basis. They should get a monthly bill and call in with a question. They should receive an Explanation of Benefits (EOBs) and be asked how much and to whom they would cut a check if it was for real. They should call in to the pre-authorization phone line and follow-up on an application. In other words, they should walk in their customer shoes at least monthly. Then, on a quarterly basis, their staff meetings should focus on what they experienced.

There’s other techniques that work. For example, executives and managers should be required to plug in and listen to phone calls between their service reps and customers. Not occasionally, but in a regular, disciplined way.

Carriers also need to find ways to quantify something more than dollars. Perhaps bonuses should be impacted by customer satisfaction survey results or even public surveys. Or, perhaps they should ask someone. Fortunately for carriers, there’s too many economists in the world with too little to do. Certainly some of them have come up with mathematical formulas for measuring intangibles. Give them a call — they’re hungry for someone to talk to. Make your CFOs sit down with them and come up with a formula that works.

And then share the results. Which is the other part of the challenge. Most businesses tend to think that everything they do must be confidential and proprietary. The market is a jungle and every advantage needs to be exploited to survive. In this mindset, advantages are to be hoarded, not diluted by sharing.

The problem is that most customers don’t really care about a lot of these proprietary advantages. An example from a book I read, but now forget the title, describes the foolishness of the auto industry when lawmakers required them to incorporate catalytic converters into their cars. Each auto maker spent many millions of dollars to invent and implement their own design. Yet who has ever purchased a car because of its catalytic converter? The industry could have redirected most of those dollars to features that matter if they had come together and designed a standard converter they all could have used.

This concept of standardizing and sharing resources is much more acceptable in the software world where open source systems like Linux and MySQL are widely used. It’s foreign to most companies, including carriers. 

Yet the opportunity to standardize and share resources is huge in the industry. Applications for coverage, claim forms, EOBs, bills, commission statements aren’t competitive advantages — their Babel-like diversity is merely a source of frustration for users. Better yet, by standardizing them, entrepreneurs could develop tools to increase efficiency for the carriers and convenience for consumers.

Consider: most carriers currently accept online applications from large producers like eHealthinsurance. Yet, as large as eHealthinsurance’s production is, it represents a small percentage of carriers’ overall sales. Why create mechanisms that benefit just a few agencies? Instead, carriers should agree on standards for quoting and case submission systems that works for all health plans in all states. These standards should be freely distributed as open-source software. eHealthinsurance may compete in the market based on its quoting system, but carriers don’t. By creating a publishing low- or no-cost software carriers can more easily implement customer friendly services like automated underwriting, immediate issuance of membership cards and the like.

Standardization doesn’t mean customization isn’t allowed. There are several flavors of Linux commercially available. Similarly, entrepreneurs could take the open-source quoting/submittal software and package them, adding new interfaces and functionality. So long as carriers standardize around the basics, however, they should all save money, increase efficiency and improve customer satisfaction with the industry as a whole. They could then use the freed-up funds to better compete on what does matter to consumers: benefit design, cost of coverage, and the like.

Would this kind of cooperation be legal? It depends on how it’s approached. The standards negotiations can be outsourced to an independent third party. Or they can be convened under the auspices of regulators. In California, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner has done something similar and has expressed an interest in helping carriers appropriately address common challenges. So yes, it can be done legally.

Attending to the basics is not exciting, but it can be impactful. Perhaps more importantly, invigorating innovations will fail unless they’re built on a strong foundation. So if the individual health insurance industry is going to reinvent itself, the nuts-and-bolts of the business is where it has to begin.