The President is not going to get our attention and while we all gain energy from listening to the Presidential candidates, it is on the state level where our voices start to be heard.
Reported on April 7, Colorado introduced its FAIR act (Fair and Accountable Insurance Rates) http://www.cohealthinitiative.org/ which will give Colorado's Insurance Commissioner the authority to review proposed insurance rates increases and approve them or disapprove them before companies can raise their rates.
It's not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. Of course insurance companies point out that medical costs have increased as unconscionably as their own greedy rates increases. True enough and health services providers will ultimately have to become part of the solution of putting a cap on the endless rising costs of health services including many of those fees that are primarily for physician profit rather than consumer wellness such as the established practice of increased costs to consumers from defensive medicine (including overtesting), preserving and increasing their own profits through arbitrary fee increases, physician disincentives for streamlining their own offices and passing savings onto consumers instead of using all cost savings as increases for their own profits, fiscally responsible purchases of equipment, passing on savings to consumers from utilizing non-physician personnel such as nurse's and physician's assistants, to name a few.
Colorado Representative Morgan Carroll (D-Aurora) is a pro-consumer representative and is named in conjunction with the FAIR act. While insurance companies argue that it is the rising cost of medical services that is responsible for the rising cost of health insurance (in part true as noted above), the bigger fact is that insurance companies keep raising rates for less insurance coverage. Less coverage takes the form of lower reimbursement rates or lower payments to providers that reduces health services participants in plans and exclusion of more and more health services and equipment from plans altogether...this is the greed factor. While lower insurance rates will not solve either of these problems, lower payments from insurers and exclusions, it will stop the trend of charging more for less coverage.
Other Colorado actions reported in the article includeHouse Speaker Andrew Romanooff and Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon's the "Insurance Accountability Act of 2008" (which must be approved by the General Assembly) and gives the Insurance Commissioner the power to PENALIZE companies for insurance tactics of delaying reimbursements and other wrongful actions against consumers.
The obvious downside of this right direction is that it's going to be too much for government to tackle without huge additions of staff for the insurance commissioner.
However, all governments have waste and hopefully Colorado will do the work to fund the necessary staff to implement these laws as well as to oversee itself and prevent more cushy government jobs that accomplish nil. In theory it is a step in the right direction.
One caveat, the article reports that people die for lack of health insurance...this shorthand lingo for explaining that people die from lack of health services (which are theoretically less available for people without health insurance) perpetuates the inaccurate and mistaken theory that health insurance is necessary for medical services. This is not true unless that health insurance sufficiently pays for needed medical services when people are sick so that they are not made sicker by the stress of paying for their care and the threat of bankruptcy. Many people with health insurance do not get medical services or screenings they need because of the fact that they can't afford either the endless diagnostic costs nor the costs of treatments WITH health insurance. Insurance companies are a financial vehicle for helping consumers pay for medical services, if the vehicle fails, then another vehicle needs to be available to consumers. Insurance companies are not vital, medical services are and nobody ever died because they didn't have health insurance...never, we die from failed access, affordability and quality of health services in our market place.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment