Colorado Representative Betsy Markey has announced that she will vote yes on the health care reform bill on Sunday, following her no vote last November. The new CBO numbers that were released this week apparently had a lot to do with her decision; she stated that reducing the deficit by “$138 billion in the first 10 years, $1.2 trillion in the second 10 years — those are figures I simply cannot ignore.” The CBO numbers are better than expected, and will likely convince some fence-riding Democrats to vote for the bill. […]
uninsured
Starting Over Seems Like A Waste
Last week’s seven hour health care summit was basically a rehash of the ideas that were tossed around throughout the last year of health care reform debate. Neither party seems willing to negotiate much more in terms of the nitty gritty of the reform, and it’s looking like the Dems might try to use reconciliation to push through their reform bill. […]
Mandate Still Too Weak In Health Care Reform Compromise
[…] If people know that they won’t be penalized for pre-existing conditions and that health insurance companies will have to accept everyone, a penalty that is just a tiny fraction of the cost of coverage might be the preferred option for a lot of people. And without a large pool of healthy insureds, I just don’t see a way that premiums won’t increase significantly. I’m keeping an open mind, but I’m skeptical that we’ll be able to provide all of the proposed consumer benefits with such a lax enforcement of mandatory health insurance.
Wellpoint Premium Increases Provide Strong Case For Mandate
[…] People who buy their own health insurance must pay the whole bill, every month. When it’s time for their rate increase, there’s no employer shouldering part of the burden. The option to continue or drop coverage is there every month when it’s time to pay the premium… and if it comes to a decision between the rent or the health insurance, it’s easy to understand how a healthy person might opt to go uninsured.
Efforts Underway To Improve Colorado Health Report Card Score
Last week I wrote about the poor results – specifically for children – on the Colorado Health Report Card. Governor Ritter has issued an explanation about the poor results, detailing how the numbers used in the report card are largely outdated (from 2007), and that many improvements have since been made in terms of the health of Colorado children. […] I’m hopeful that the next Colorado Health Report Card will show a big improvement across the board, but especially in the area of children’s health.
Poor Results On The Colorado Health Report Card
The 2009 Colorado Health Report Card was just released, and the score for healthy children slipped from a C- in 2008 to a D+ in 2009. I find it particularly interesting that our state ranks at the very top of the list in terms of the percentage of adults who are obese (we’re the only state in the nation with less than a 20% adult obesity rate) and yet our kids aren’t even close to the top of the list, with 22 states having lower childhood obesity rates. […]
Mandates And Health Insurance Premiums
[…] We cannot continue to just tack on more mandates that increase health insurance benefits without addressing the inevitable premium increases that will follow. We absolutely need to address the problem of people facing staggering bills when a medical condition is not covered at all by their health insurance, but if we continue to add mandates without looking for ways to bring down costs, we’re only going to push more people into being uninsured.
Rush Limbaugh Advises His Listeners To Go Uninsured
There are plenty of valid complaints against the current health care reform bills. Those who say that the bills don’t do enough to address the root problem of ever-increasing health care costs have a very good point. But take it with a grain of salt when a multi-millionaire with the ability to pay cash for any medical treatment he might need rails against reform that might make medical care more affordable for average people and talks […]
Americans More Concerned About The Economy Than Health Care
[…] A good deal of President Obama’s state of the union address last night was focused on his plans for economic recovery, and this makes sense. But bringing health care costs into line with what the rest of the world spends should still be a priority, and I hope that we continue to look for solutions that will eventually result in affordable, accessible health care for all Americans.
Health Insurance Might Be Less Expensive Than You Think
Gary VanderArk and Gretchen Hammer, president and executive director of the Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved, have written an opinion piece for the Denver Post about how health care reform will benefit the people of Colorado. I agree with their analysis – there will be a lot positive changes once health care reform takes effect, especially for low-income Coloradans and those who are currently uninsured […]
Comparing Health Care Costs And Outcomes
van Falchuk has written a very thoughtful article about a recent graph created by National Geographic. At first glance, the implications of the graph are startlingly obvious: the US spends way too much on health care, a view that has been widely repeated throughout the health care reform debate. But Evan’s detailed analysis of the graph does make one pause to consider whether the graph might be over-simplifying things. […]
Lowering Demand For Health Care Through Prevention
[…] But the government can create policies that make the good choices easier and less expensive than the bad choices, and that just might make a difference. Perhaps the next step in health care reform should be working to make Americans healthier to begin with, rather than trying to figure out how to fix us after we get sick.
Socioeconomic Status And Wait Times For Health Care
Critics of the current health care reform efforts have consistently pointed to the longer wait times to see a specialist when one is ill in Canada or Europe, compared with the US (of course, for people with no health insurance at all, wait times are probably considerable here too). Jason Shafrin has written an interesting article about wait times to see a specialist in Europe, and the role that socioeconomic status plays. […]
Health Is About More Than Health Insurance
[…] Data like this indicates that simply providing health insurance to everyone is not the key to actually improving our overall health (which should really be the end goal of health care reform). Providing real access to health care should indeed be the first step, but it is far from the last step. Personal responsibility plays a huge part in protecting our health, but so do government policies. Hopefully health care – and the real preservation of health – will continue to be a priority.
Lessons From The Taiwanese Health Insurance System
[…] job of convincing people that we really don’t need a lot of the health care services that are currently viewed as essential. 16% of our GDP is spent on health care, tens of millions of Americans have no health insurance and have to rely on free clinics and crowded emergency rooms for care, more than half of all bankruptcies in this country stem from medical problems… all of this, and our life expectancy is only a few weeks longer than that of people in Taiwan.
Surtax Not That Much Of A Burden
[…] But let’s look at the actual impact of the tax as it’s currently written in the Senate bill. It wouldn’t take effect until the beginning of 2013, so wealthy Americans would have three years to squirrel away savings before they had to start paying a little extra in taxes. And the actual amount of the tax is set at half of a percent of income above the $200,000 threshold. Let’s consider a CEO who earns a million dollars a year, filing on his own. $800,000 of her income would be subject to the healthcare surtax, at a rate of 0.5 percent. Half of one percent is not a large chunk of anything. In this case, it would amount to $4,000 ($800,000 times 0.005). So we would be asking a person earning a million dollars a year to kick in an extra $4000 to help pay for healthcare. My vote? That is perfectly fair. Her million dollar a year salary puts her above nearly every other American in terms of earnings, and $4000 doesn’t make much of a dent in a million dollars. […]
Not All States Have A Guaranteed Issue Option
[…] High risk pools are definitely better than nothing, but they don’t solve all insurance problems for people who have pre-existing conditions, and they don’t exist at all in some states. One of the aims of reform ought to include truly making health insurance available – in all states – to all applicants who want to purchase it. If we make all health insurance policies guaranteed issue (without also significantly expanding the pool of healthy insureds via a strong mandate), we’ll likely see higher costs for all insureds. But a good start would be to make sure that everyone, regardless of where they live, has access to at least one guaranteed issue health insurance policy (and no, discount plans and limited benefit policies don’t count).
Chamber Of Commerce Short On Solutions
The Chamber of Commerce has been vehemently opposed to the health care reform bills that have been debated in the House and Senate this year, so it isn’t much of a surprise to see that they are raising money to pay an economist who can “prove” that the proposed reform would increase unemployment and harm the US economy […]
Health Wonk Review
Welcome to the Health Wonk Review. 2009 has been an exciting year for health care reform, and last Saturday’s passage of HR3962, the Affordable Health Care for America Act, has given us plenty to talk about. For anyone who hasn’t kept up on the details of the House reform bill, I want to start things off with a four-part series from Tim Jost, who holds the Robert L Willett Family Professorship of Law at the Washington and Lee University School of Law. His articles were published at Health Affairs Blog, and amount to an excellent primer, written in plain English, for people who want to understand HR3962, but don’t have time to read all 1990 pages […]
Colorado Premiums Rising Faster Than National Average
Across the US, employers will see a 9% increase in health insurance premiums next year. But in Colorado, the increase will be an average of 11.8%. The Lockton Group has released its 2010 Colorado Employer Benefits Survey Report, and it indicates that Colorado will see bigger premium increases than the country as a whole. This puts Colorado businesses at a disadvantage in terms of direct operating expenses, as health insurance makes up a large portion of business overhead. It also makes it harder for Colorado businesses to compete for the best employees, since premium increases are being passed along to employees in the form of higher premiums and fewer benefits. Not surprisingly, Colorado businesses are much less likely to offer pricey HMOs than they were a decade ago (32% now, versus 89% in 2000), and far more of them are offering HSA qualified, high deductible health insurance policies (which have lower premiums) for their employees (27% now, versus only 3% in 2003).
Colorado residents tend to be healthier than the average American. We’re thinner, and have lower incidence of hypertension and diabetes than most of the rest of the country. So why would health insurance rates be rising faster here than in the rest of the country? My guess is that it has something to do our higher-than-average percentage of the population without health insurance. 17.2% of Colorado residents are uninsured, compared with national numbers that tend to be in the 15 – 16% range. When uninsured patients are treated by our health care providers (emergency rooms are a good example of this), the providers have to recoup their losses somehow. This usually translates into higher reimbursement rates being negotiated with health insurance companies. The insurance companies pass on their higher costs to customers in the form of higher premiums and/or reduced benefits. […]
Declined… Now What?
If you’ve been declined for an individual policy by a private health insurance company in Colorado, you do still have other options. I’ll outline them here, and provide links to detailed information that you might find helpful. […]
Expanding Access To Cover Colorado
I have often wondered about the feasibility of Cover Colorado expanding their eligibility to attract healthier applicants and perhaps improve their loss ratio. The state high risk pool health insurance policy – has claims expenses that far exceed premiums collected. Fees on private health insurance companies and a grant from Medicare help to make up the difference. […]
Reducing Demand For Health Care
Dr. William Foster has written a very thoughtful editorial about the state of our health care system, and it’s well worth reading. He points out that as a society, we’re always looking for the latest and greatest in health care, but at the same time we want it to be more affordable. We run more tests and perform more procedures than ever before – and our health care costs reflect this. […]
John Mackey And Health Care Reform
[…] But with any commodity in the marketplace, there will always be people who can’t afford it. The life or death nature of access to health care makes it too important to place it on the same shelf as cars and jeans and high-end organic potato chips. It people can’t afford (and thus don’t purchase) those things, they will still be ok. The same can’t really be said for health care.
Playing With Fire
I just read this article from NPR and Kaiser Health News about Lyn Robinson, a 52 year old woman who has chosen to be uninsured. Lyn is very healthy. She leads an active life and takes good care of herself. She pays out of pocket for alternative health care like acupuncture and chiropractic care – things that often aren’t covered by health insurance policies anyway. […]