Hits & Misses – 2009/10/16
Is it fair to charge people a premium that reflects the real cost of the insurance they are buying? RWJ finds that question hard to answer. Let’s hope they stay away from other insurance markets.
Mayo unit stops accepting Medicare. Senior access already deteriorating and the health reform bill isn’t even out of committee yet.
I’m not sure the RWJ Foundation understands insurance. Any insurance, not just health insurance.
Mayo Scottsdale and Mayo Jacksonville haven’t accepted Medicare for years.
Think about that. Peter Orszag is telling us he wants to model the whole health care system based on an approach that excludes senior citizens.
Hi John,
On that last video, “Kids sing for health reform” – you need to watch the full version. CNN cut some stuff out…hmmm…wonder why?
If you don’t want to watch the whole thing you can start the video at about 2:20…pretty interesting huh?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbqbK7zhNhQ&feature=PlayList&p=F667D864B30BD5AE&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=5
As long as the RWJ Foundation is asking questions, I’d like to know why auto insurance costs more when a teenager is on my policy. Sounds unfair to me. There ought to be a law…
RWJF doesn’t seem the least bit ambivalent about community rating, only about whether it should be pure or modified.
Insurance companies should be able to charge for risk using any reasonable means– including DNA screening– so long as the policy is not subsidized by government in any way.
As soon as the feds begin handing out money, though, the ethical requirement changes. To simply hand everyone a voucher without regard to need is largess.
I assume organizations like RWJ have the best of intentions. It’s just that all the people being gouged have other ideas of fairness. The result is a health insurance market that is dysfunctional. Health status has much in common with saving for retirement. It works best if workers themselves begin setting money aside while young to offset health needs later in life. But nobody seems to be talking about this.
RWJF is responsible for the ideas that undergird ObamaCare.
It funded the failed initiatives that led to ObamaCare, including Kentucky Kare (bankrupting the public employees system), TennCare (almost bankrupting the state), Dirigo Care (big problems in Maine), and the guaranteed issue community rated totally dysfunctional insurance markets in Maine, New Jersey, New York, and Vermont. Throw in BadgerCare, Keiki Care, Sooner Care, MaineCare, and, well, you get the picture–if at first you don’t succeed, pass more regulation with the ultimate in regulation being the individual mandate requiring payments to a public plan.
RWJF understands insurance perfectly well. It simply doesn’t think that private insurance should exist unless it acts as a fig leaf for single payer, or is completely controlled by a government that tells you what you are going to buy and who you are going to buy it from.
And as, according to the Foundation Center, it controlled something like 63% of all foundation grants for health policy in the US in 2002, it has a lot of clout regardless of whether or not its policy recommendations have failed to perform as advertised.
Linda, thanks for your comment. That explains a lot.