Our Health Policy Matters

If you watched HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher on November 12th, you heard Mike Huckabee propose a public option as part of a health reform fix.   With “repeal, revise, and replace” stories in the news every day, shouldn’t this be worth at least one national headline?   Governor Huckabee didn’t just flirt with the public option; he married it to his opposition to requiring insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions.      Defending his position, Huckabee argued “when you buy insurance you’re buying something in the private sector.   Now maybe there’s a place to say if you’re really, really sick and you can’t access a traditional marketplace then should we have some form of safety net?   Yeah. I’ve said that; I did that when I was Governor.”    He called for “a partnership between government and the private sector” to insure people with pre-existing conditions. So what did Mr. Huckabee propose?   He cited the Arkansas TEFRA program he started for families of children with ser

Health insurance reform is being implemented now, and it's no surprise that there’s a big battle going on pitting consumers against insurers.   The surprise is that the state regulators charged with protecting consumers are siding with insurers on some key issues. The Biggest Consumer Protection in Health Reform If you ask 100 people what the biggest consumer protection in the health reform law is, I would guess that fewer than 10 of them would tell you it’s the loss ratio mandate. The what, you say?    We know about lifetime caps and pre-existing conditions and minimum benefit packages.   Few of us know about “loss ratios.” As we’ll see, consumers have a lot at stake in the loss ratio battle, including – for some – hundreds of dollars of premium costs per month .   What’s a loss ratio? What’s a loss ratio, and why should you care?   Simply put, a loss ratio is the percentage of dollars taken in through premiums paid back out in benefits.   For example, if a plan pays out $75 in be

Discussing health reform over the weekend, House Republican leader Eric Cantor told the New York Times that “ it is my intention to begin repealing it piece by piece, blocking funding for its implementation and blocking the issuance of the regulations necessary to implement it.” Congressman Cantor’s Problem To which “it” does Congressman Cantor refer?   The “it” creating a new long term care insurance program so that elders will be able to fund nursing or home care as they age?   Or the “it” creating a new catastrophic care insurance plan so that healthy young people will be able to afford some insurance coverage as they age out of their parents’ plans?   Perhaps it’s the “it” that provides new grants to community health centers, or the “it” providing new training for primary care physicians to recognize and treat chronic conditions, or the “it” creating thousands of needed new jobs in the health care workforce.   Congressman Cantor’s problem is that there isn’t an “it” to be repealed

Now that the election is over, those who voted for change because they wanted health reform repealed had better prepare for disappointment.   Here are six reasons why it’s not going to happen, no matter what campaigning politicians may have said. First, no politician is going to vote to reopen the Medicare donut hole again.   The one millionth $250 rebate check was mailed out in August, and the 2 million plus who will eventually get them are not about to give them back.   The donut hole will start closing in earnest in 2011, and the scores of people in every Congressional district who will benefit from lower out-of-pocket drug costs will remind members of Congress that they’re paying attention and they vote.   No newly elected member of Congress is going to risk offending these voters right from the start. Second, people don’t want insurance companies to be able to deny them coverage all over again for their pre-existing conditions when it took so long to win this battle legislatively.