The Financial Issues Surrounding Health Insurance and Health Care Reform
Welcome to this installment of the Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup. In keeping with the hot-button topic of health care reform, we'll be looking at two different articles today that take a different look at the financials of health care reform from various different points of view. Our first article comes from CBS News and is entitled, "The Health Care Cost Saving Myth." This article takes a detailed look at where various people are saying costs would be cut under a reform system, and how, in the end, that just won't be happening.
The article looks at some methods of cost-savings that, the author feels won't work or won't happen. First up is rationing, the fear of "death panels" and the like. This fear-based tactic has worked in the past to keep reform from even moving forward in the legislature. The argument that, by providing more care for everyone would keep costs lower, and providing preventative care saves money down the line, all sounds fine on paper, but in actuality it would be very hard to achieve. Also, the author states that preventative care, in the long run, would cost more than the potential savings.
He further goes on to state that reducing health care in order to save money, yet granting access to everyone for that same health care, would result in shortages the likes of which we've never seen before. Ultimately, the author sees the only way to save money with any real health care reform is not going to happen, as any strategy -- providing less care, giving less money to caregivers, or using fewer actual health care insurance companies -- will end up costing us more in the long run than any potential savings. Sadly, the author doesn't give any ways that health care reform can actually work to save money, only ways he thinks it can't. However these arguments are compelling enough to keep in mind when looking at the larger debate.
Our second article is titled, "Healthcare insurers get upper hand," and comes to us from the Los Angeles Times. In this article, they talk about the potential windfall that health insurance companies would get if a mandated health insurance system was passed. Many versions of health care reform come with proposals to give low-income households subsidies to pay for health insurance through traditional health insurance companies.
While many insurance companies are still wary of a public option competing with their health insurance monopolies, many of them still want mandated health insurance to happen for the windfall of customers, and dollars, they would receive once health insurance became mandated. Many health insurance companies are even taking active roles against a public option, encouraging their employees to speak out at town hall meetings and running negative advertisements.
The problem is that health insurance companies can't have their cake and eat it too. They can't really want a mandate system and yet not want a part of that system that would help keep costs down and make it both competitive and attractive in the first place. Hopefully we'll get a system that makes everyone happy, but until then, the arguing will continue.
