Colorado Health Insurance

With so many people advocating a Single-Payor healthcare system (which eliminates health insurance and choice over healthcare coverage), I think it is important to illustrate where the real costs of our healthcare system are coming from:

From the NAHU Newswire:
"The Detroit Free Press (1/17, Anstett, Walsh) reported, "Facing what it says could be losses of more than $1 billion through 2011, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan said Friday it will cut as many as 1,000 jobs and seek state approval to raise rates on its individual health insurance products." According to Andrew Hetzel, vice president of communications, the job cuts "are 'across all divisions'" of the insurer's HMO, "but do not affect other subsidiaries." Meanwhile, the insurer is seeking rate hikes averaging "55 percent for nongroup plans; 32 percent for Medicare Supplemental, or Medicgap, products, and 42 percent for those with group conversion plans that carry over prior workplace coverage." These increases "are subject to approval by Michigan's Office of Financial Insurance and Regulation."

        Blue Cross stated that its workforce cuts are in response to "'large and uncontrollable losses' on individual policies," Modern Healthcare (1/17, Blesch) added. The layoffs are expected to accompany "other cost-cutting initiatives, including salary reductions for senior executives, salary freezes for executives and nonunion employees, and" a request that "employees covered under a United Auto Workers contract delay a scheduled three percent pay increase." The insurers indicated that "it bled $140 million on individual policies in 2008 and...expects to lose another $320 million" in 2009."

Let's take a closer look at how your health insurance premiums are spent by the insurance companies.  Click here.

Obviously, it is the cost of healthCARE that is at the epicenter of our healthcare cost problems, and NOT health insurance industry profit.  To really target this issue, we need to prioritize our goals, and fix the causes of the problem (high healthcare costs), not the symptom (high insurance premiums).   Here are a few of the goals that I believe Washington should be looking at BEFORE we implement a complete overhaul of our health insurance system:

1.)  Pay healthcare providers for Performance rather than pay per procedure.
2.)  Reduce administration costs AND malpractice costs by implementing technology to improve and standardize claim handling procedures and the transfer of patient's medical history information between healthcare providers. 
3.)  Improve transparency of service fees.  People need to know how much they are going to spend for a healthcare services BEFORE they get the bill from their provider NOT after.  This will give consumers more power over treatment options and help them to make wiser choices with regards to their own healthcare.
4.)  Expand of Consumer-Driven healthcare plans such as HSAs, which protect consumers against bankruptcy, while at the same time, require consumers to pay a fixed amount of dollars out of their own pockets for their own healthcare.  These health plans provide tax incentives for people to save towards SOME of their own healthcare expenses and encourage consumers to make wiser use of their own out of pocket healthcare dollars. 

-- Edited by Lynne Erickson at 09:54, 2009-01-20

-- Edited by Lynne Erickson at 12:51, 2009-01-20

-- Edited by Lynne Erickson at 12:52, 2009-01-20

-- Edited by Lynne Erickson at 09:04, 2009-01-21