Thats it folks. You cannot control costs in the face of huge increases in demand without an offsetting increase in supply of caregivers. In my state the politicians celebrated when they got more enrollment in 2 months in medicaid programs than were predicted in one year. YIKES. Anyone know how to increase covered lives by 40-50 million uninsureds without increasing demand?

Sure you can save a billion here or there with streamlining, efficiencies, best practices etc etc. But when utilization is increasing without more doctors and hospitals forget controlling the costs.

What is the value added by a health insurance company? It takes in money, invests it, takes a cut for profit and payroll, then distributes the money needed for claims. Unlike companies which specialize in products that we all gain from due to the expertise of the company, what do we benefit from a multitude of insurance companies doing the same thing and offering essentially the same thing?

Even worse – to have many companies all using different paperwork and procedures seems a huge waste of money when a giant pool of all of the customers of those many companies can be created under ONE paperwork/policy routine and ONE bureaucracy. To try to eliminate the public option is exactly the opposite of what should be attempted which is to create as large a pool of people in the public option as possible.

Can someone make a case for what benefit we derive from private health insurance companies? Please try to make a case because I’m at a loss to defend the many players we have right now.

Any public plan, of course, should have carrots and sticks: higher rates for unhealthy behavior such as smoking, for example. All the calculations for rates should be open to the public to make it clear that the costs are being covered and how.

1. Employers can realize a financial and productivity benefit from keeping employees’ healthy, because of the reduction in not only medical costs, but disability, workers compensation, and sick days. They also gain from better productivity and quality. No other system, including a public plan, delivers as good an alignment between health and financial benefit.
2. Care delivered on or near the locations where any individual spends his or her waking hours is more likely to result in earlier treatment of emerging illnesses, more extensive use of good screenings and immunization, and less aggressive and less costly use of drugs.
3.A less centralized system and one with less concentration of covered lives than a large public plan would have is better able to react to fast-changing medical developments. By its nature, CMS reacts slowly to changes in the way medical science has defined “best practices.” Moreover, public plans are subject to more politically-powerful, but sometimes medically-questionable coverage decisions, as evidenced by the decision by CMS and many states in the early 1990’s to pay for high-dose chemotherapy, combined with autologous bone marrow transplants, a treatment option that was subsequently discredited by clinical studies.

Public plans that have high qualifying income thresholds have the potential to siphon off the healthiest and most profitable young employees of a private insurance system, and eventually destroy that system. As that is happening, more people will be in public systems that are disconnected from their day-to-day activities and are less matched to fast-changing understandings of what constitutes good medical practice. We will miss a golden opportunity to expand on the innovation of state-of-the-art employer plans that truly have the potential to take cost down and make care affordable for all.

Ultimately, we have a health crisis that drives up the cost of health care and health insurance. The public plan does not create an environment in which those with the best ability to make people healthier, namely employers, are incented to continue to find ways to make the employees and families for whom they pay for care heathier. If we do not solve the health crisis, health insurance will continue to become more and more unaffordable.

You are not calculating the true cost of our current healthcare system. The cost of our current system includes many costs directly and indirectly related to paying claims.

Government, Insurance Companies, and Lawyers each take a cut of healthcare dollars before it gets to the medical facilities. When multiple Government plans are coupled to multiple insurance plans to settle a single claim, a very expensive and confusing system is created

We are all covered by and pay for thousands of healthcare policies every day.

A single injury (i.e. ankle injury) might be covered by a personal healthcare policy, auto liability insurance, workers comp, or property liability insurance, depending on the circumstances of the injury.

Currently healthcare policies are plentiful but too fractured and specific. Health insurance is included in personal healthcare plans, product liability insurance, property liability insurance, workers’ comp insurance, auto liability insurance, medical malpractice insurance, and government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, VA, or Indian health benefits. Gaps in coverage and redundant coverage cause lawsuits, which delay payments and add direct and indirect costs to consumers.
Healthcare is never going to be affordable when Government, Insurance Companies, and Lawyers each take a cut of healthcare dollars before it gets to the medical facilities. When multiple Government plans are coupled to multiple insurance plans to settle a single claim, a very expensive and confusing system is created.

The replacement system should be, each person has and pays for one “No Fault Personal Healthcare Policy” eliminating redundant healthcare cost and coverage in all other plans. The plan should be sold on the open market through existing insurance Companies.

Congress passing a Bill stating, “Each person will be covered by a single No Fault Personal Healthcare Policy which replaces all other medical healthcare policies”, would implement this plan.

The Government would have to make it mandatory that every person has this coverage.
In certain cases government assistance might have to happen, but working with one plan, one agency, and one set of rules there should be savings.

It would still be illegal to create unsafe products or work places and the current laws and penalties would still apply. If long-term injuries occurred Lawsuits for compensation would still happen. Lawyers would still have job security.

The savings from eliminating redundancy is not being subtracted in calculating the true cost.
I would hope the plan being sold on the open market would satisfy the Republicans.
I would hope the plan being a Universal Healthcare Plan would satisfy the Democrats.