Monday, December 28, 2009

Reform

Lots of new things on the horizon for years to come, as we seem to be close to the amended health reform bill which is getting ready for an Obama signature.

The public option is dead, but it sounds like insurance carriers will not be able to medically underwrite sick folks, or imposed pre-existing condition language. The fear is how we pay for this? We need to have both healthy low utilizers in the new system along with the 5-8% of the population which drives 95% of the high claims. Without healthy offsetting sick, not sure that premiums will not radically rise.

We also need ala carte care, for example, if we have already had our children, why should we need maternity care in our policy? Also, if I prefer pharmacy, hospital, doc visits, but not speech therapy, occupational or physical therapy and no mental health benefit, shouldn't I be able to also carve that out? These are more individual health care questions, but perhaps in a group environment we will see this choice too.

Our system is so, so broken -