Wagging the Dog on Health Care Reform, and Possible Medical Discount Coverage Scams
Welcome to this installment of the Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup. This time around we will take a look at two interesting stories, one dealing on health care reform and the other focusing on scams in which people purchase medical discount plans thinking they're actual health insurance plans. Our first article comes to us from The Washington Post and is entitled, "A Tail Wags The Dog on Health Reform." In this article, author Ruth Marcus has a problem with the public health plan portion of health care reform.
The public health plan being proposed by lawmakers and other proponents is basically a government-run plan similar to Medicare, which is fairly successful. However, since many health insurance companies are dead set against a public plan of any kind, the author worries that, if lawmakers do move forward with plans for a public health care plan, it'll be diluted to such an effect as to be made ineffective and useless.
The author also worries that so much attention is being paid to the public plan portion of health care reform (the tail of her proverbial dog) that there is too little focus on the larger issue, making the health care and health insurance industries more transparent and more efficient. The author notes that for a public system to work, it needs to have the power and flexibility to set prices as well as be competitive with its payouts to doctors and hospitals when compared to private insurance companies. If a public plan can set prices and set it up for doctors and hospitals to require its acceptance, then it has a chance against the private insurance companies. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out in the months and years to come.
Our other story comes from The Providence Journal and is entitled, "Consumers falling victim to bogus health-care cards." This article looks at a growing problem in which consumers -- looking for the most affordable health insurance plans they can find -- get suckered into plans that offer cheap medical coverage, only to find that instead of health insurance, they've signed up for medical discount plans.
The problem with medical discount plans is that they not only provide very limited coverage, but don't actually limit your liability, possibly leaving customers with very high medical bills they weren't expecting to pay. Many companies who offer these types of plans are selling themselves as major medical coverage, the type of health insurance we're all used to. The problem is that these plans charge hundreds of dollars a month for individual or family coverage, yet when someone actually gets sick, they provide very little actual coverage for any procedures or medicines the customer might needs. This article is basically one big warning about health insurance plans -- if it looks to good to be true, it probably is.
This concludes this installment of the Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup. I hope you've found it enjoyable, and may you have a happy and healthy day.
