Comments for The Alan Katz Health Care Reform Blog

Comment on Health Care Reform Means Changes for Brokers, Not Elimination by ביטוח

ביטוח — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:01:04 +0000

Good artical.
thanks , I enjoyed reading it

Comment on House Health Care Reform Passes, But It’s Far From the Last Word by ביטוח

ביטוח — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 13:00:11 +0000

Good artical.
thanks , I enjoyed reading it

Comment on House Health Care Reform Passes, But It’s Far From the Last Word by ביטוח

ביטוח — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 12:59:10 +0000

very nice!
Keep up with the good job

Comment on Liberal’s Approach to Health Care Reform Made Abortion Controversy Inevitable by Alan

Alan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:33:01 +0000

Thanks for sharing this opinion piece, but to be fair, while the column ran in the Christian Science Monitor, it is simply the opinion of an economics professor that Health Co-operatives will lead to nationalized health care. And while the professor makes one interesting and valid point (that if everyone joins together into large pools the advantage of being a large pool diminishes), his conclusion that this will destroy private carriers is unpersuasive. He seems to thinks that member-run health insurance co-operatives will drive their competitors out of business. But there’s more to competition than simply hammering providers down on their prices. There’s things like customer service, innovative products, sales and marketing savvy and host of other factors. And even on the issue of price, there’s little evidence non-profit co-ops will be able to drive a better bargain than for-profit plans, let alone other non-profit carriers.

Health insurance co-operatives are unlikely to harm the private carriers. Instead, they could bring needed competition to those communities where a few — or sometimes just one — health plan dominates the market. Elsewhere, they’re likely to be irrelevant.

Comment on Liberal’s Approach to Health Care Reform Made Abortion Controversy Inevitable by JimK

JimK — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:51:45 +0000

The Christian Science Monitor on how Health Co-operatives will lead to nationalization of the healthcare system.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/1110/p09s02-coop.html

Comment on Liberal’s Approach to Health Care Reform Made Abortion Controversy Inevitable by Alison

Alison — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:25:10 +0000

Its like they are going shopping at the hardware store for groceries.

Comment on Liberal’s Approach to Health Care Reform Made Abortion Controversy Inevitable by npg

npg — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:40:56 +0000

a public option will NOT increase competition, this is once again totally wrong, a canard… the govt. will deficit spend to UNDERCUT, UNDERPRICE, and drive out the private carriers…a govt. provided plan was, is and always WILL be a Trojan Horse which will without question destroy the private primary health insurance industry, and with it all agents

Comment on House Health Care Reform Passes, But It’s Far From the Last Word by World Vitamins Online

World Vitamins Online — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 16:52:20 +0000

It would appear that there is going to be a much more difficult fight in the Senate. It will be interesting to see what comes out of this. I hope they put more emphasis on controlling cost than the House did.

Comment on House Health Care Reform Passes, But It’s Far From the Last Word by Kyle

Kyle — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 03:46:56 +0000

Interesting tidbit on healthcare regarding “uninsured Americans” : of the 46 Million uninsured, 18 Million make more than $50,000 a year (about 7k over median income) and choose not to buy insurance. Of the 28 Million remaining, over 9.5 Million aren’t american citizens i.e. temporary workers or foreign exchange students. so the real number is closer to 18 Million americans, who make less than $50,000. interesting stat mainstream media doesn’t tend to look into very much.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2009pubs/p60-236.pdf pag 28

Comment on Health Care Reform Means Changes for Brokers, Not Elimination by Joel

Joel — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 13:45:37 +0000

I am a finacial strategist that offers health insurance consultancy to my clients. I agree with much of what you wrote and found, further, that as a consultant I can extract a much higher return on the services I provide regarding health care — whether it’s educating, advocating or implementing a policy. I believe, however, that this is a cost that many in Washington (surprise) do not foresee. And, similar to many social welfare efforts passed by the government (i.e. social security), will end up making government’s end goal more elusive and expensive. While the insurance industry is a mess to begin with, in this case, I find the proposed solutions to be worse than the problem.

Consider, if you will, the version just passed in the House v the Senate idea. To cover an extra 2% of the population (or 60,000 people), the House bill costs over $155 billion more than the Senate version. Each person covered by the House bill that is not covered by the Senate version costs nearly $2.6 million to insure. Is there anyone in America that can’t get quality healthcare for less than $2.6 million??

I agree that the climate is changing. Personally, I think we’ll finally be adequately compensated for dealing with this stupid morass known as health insurance.

Comment on Comprehensive Health Care Reform Not Very Comprehensive by JimK

JimK — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:38:00 +0000

The current legislation does have a section dedicated towards a “program” designed to study a different approach to physician compensation. It also has a “trust fund” provision to be used towards evaluating comparative effectiveness. The annual budget for the comparative effectiveness program begins in the range of 90 million dollars annually and then escalates by 10 million dollars over the next two years.
I did not look at the physician compensation program that closely, so I can’t really say of this is just window dressing or is it a true blueprint for changing the fee for service model. The same can be said for the comparative effectiveness program. The initial budget dedicated to the program seem substantial but perhaps it is not. In addition, the legislation only sets up a Trust Fund and a panel to implement the trust fund. The legislation seems to lack a direction on what is to be done with the findings of the panel.
There are other sections that seem to be dedicated to reviewing and adjusting the pay structure of the current coding system, but I believe Medicare already does this so its affect will probably be minimal.
My biggest concern is on the employer mandated expenses, and again I did not thoroughly review the legislation but it seems to me that the legislation will impose stiff taxes on some employers and the mandates will discourage hiring and be an impediment to wage hikes.
Finally, the dollar value of subsidies outside the US territories appear to be in the hands of the agency set up to administer the program and with that being the case the income levels eligible for a subsidy may actually be much lower than the original 300 to 400% levels discussed previously. There is caselaw that supports the fact that the subsidies will be lower than originally proposed. The case involved the Postal Service Reorganization Act of 1971 and under the original legislation there was a legislated pay provision whereby management would be guaranteed a minimum pay differential of 25% over that of the bargaining unit. The Court ruled that since the specific precentage was considered and removed it demonstrated that Congress did not set a base floor and the agancy had complete discretion on where that floor should be set.
In closing, since in my opinion you have been very objective in your reporting on this issue I will take you at your word that this current legislation is seriously lacking and I can expect higher premiums if the Bill is passed. There is one interesting note and that is with regards to retirees. I am a retired Postal Employee and one section seems to indicate that had I retired after this Bill was passed my health insurance premiums would have remained the same as when I was working. This provision does not affect other Federal Employees as their contributions are the same whether they are working or retired.

Comment on Comprehensive Health Care Reform Not Very Comprehensive by World Vitamins Online

World Vitamins Online — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:25:29 +0000

I think the dissent at the August Town Hall meetings resulted in the fact that people in this country have been watching Washington screw up everything they have touched for the last 20 years. You can not take care of the interest of corporate America and the interest of the people in it at the same time, these are two totally different agendas. Whatever comes out of this I am sure that the majority of people will be worst off for it.

Comment on Senator Reid Attempts to Find Middle Ground on Public Option by Dave Wood

Dave Wood — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:51:46 +0000

Sham is not the proper word. It will be real.

The irony of the public option is that the private insurers will see that as time goes on, the poorest and sickest will see that the public option has the least obstacles to their healthcare needs and the greatest offering of services. In other words, Blue Cross will still try to NOT pay for some of these very sick peoples claims while the public option plan will offer NO resistance to these expensive claims, THUS over time more and more of the sick and poor will flock to the public plan.

Over time the public option will go broke, or need to raise prices on premiums and the public option will fail.

Does anybody believe that states will allow the public option to fail? The only way to keep the public option afloat is to subsidize it, or change the rules to aid it. There is no way that the public option will be on a fair playing field.

As liberals or conservatives get into power, the rules will change, subsidys expanded or reduced, campaigns paid off and politicians swayed to benefit one side or the other. The public option is no solution for this mess.

What we need is a PURE private insurance based, more choice and more competition system like in Switzerland or the Netherlands….OR a pure single payer system with 80% govt. control like in France or Germany. THEN let states opt into either program through a local election. Vermont or ORegong may go for the single payer system. Kansas or Utah may go for the private insurance based system. What say you??????

Comment on House Health Care Reform Bill: Some Varied Perspectives by Dave Wood

Dave Wood — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 18:36:45 +0000

Why Obama, Hillary, and John Edwards ALL went down the Massachusetts reform model road is a mystery to me. The Mass. reforms have done nothing to reduce costs, but have done excellent at expanding the insured.

The main problem with our system is that there is no major authority to handle important issues such as obesity reduction. In our system we have 532 members of congress running Medicare and Medicaid, the President as well, and then 50 states all involved in health care.

Notice that when there is a SINGLE chief, like Wellpoint Blue Cross, they seem to get exactly what serves their needs. For big drug companys as well.

The reason these corporations get what they want is because there is real ACCOUNTABILITY for them. Whereas for the states we have governors elected on a myriad of issues, medicaid fraud not very high on the list, thus it gets no attention in any election. Lax accountability results in lax results…EVERY TIME

So we get a very slow process for change, with poor results, complex compromises, and no accountablity for those poor results. Contrast that with Pfizer or Merck where the CEO is in charge and if he does not get results, he gets the boot- FAST.

Sadly Obama care is the same old song and dance from big govt. and we will undoubtedly get poor results and no accountability.

Who is taking the fall for the trillion$ plus costs of this phony war in Iraq? Who is taking the fall for the fact that Congress voted to ALLOW fannie and freddy to EXPAND risky home loan purchases when some were screaming that fannie and freddy should be reined in? Who is taking the fall for the fact that Medicare has at least 10% of its claims are fraudulent? That is $40 billion per year folks.

Do you trust that this Congress will run Obama care with any efficiency?

Comment on House Health Care Reform Bill: Some Varied Perspectives by Doug

Doug — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:48:28 +0000

I would not call anything currently running through Congress a “good starting point”. The proposed laws will do NOTHING to curve the cost of health care. Consumers will pay an indirect tax on medical devices and on “premium” insurance plans. Second, there is a menagerie of insurance regulations where the federal government will mandate expensive coverage and quell any possibility of low cost plans. Third, there is a series of individual and payroll penalties for not owning or offering the “correct” insurance coverage. That is like penalizing a homeless person not getting a mansion.
There are alternatives to putting a velvet cover on the sledge hammer of the current “reform”. Allow insurance to be purchased across state lines, increase transparency in cost and incentives for consumers to lower cost themselves, expand health care savings accounts, equalize the tax treatment for health insurance cost, and improve management of Medicare.
These items would be a good start. The Hippocratic Oath states “Do no harm”, well I would say the current “reform” bill will do a lot more harm than good.