Florida health insurance, Cadillac vs Chevrolet?

Florida lawmakers tackling the health services crisis are pursuing the goal of increasing the number of insured without sufficient attention to the consumer stakeholder interest in achieving access, affordability, and quality in health SERVICES http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/04/18/ap4907423.html.

As previously identified, politicians deal in gross numbers, merely seeking publicity through achieving increases in the NUMBERS of insured rather than considering the quality of the insurance coverage they create or mandate as representatives of citizens. As previously identified

(http://conoutofconsumer.blogspot.com/search?q=less+for+more), politician goals are meaningless without a priority of achieving useful insurance coverage, defined as insurance that allows citizens to pay for the cost of treating illness without bankrupting the patient. The FL plan is not on track to achieve this goal.

The Forbes article quotes politicians describing consumer ability to have a Chevrolet if they can't afford a Cadillac, but the reasoning is out of touch with reality. Charging less for a "Chevrolet" implies a cheaper car, but still a car. In the meantime, the way FL is planning to offer cheaper insurance is by removing coverages for many illnesses, conditions and treatments...that's not an equivalent car for a car but is offering a car without wheels, engine or brakes in order to sell it cheaper. Idiotic. Especially since the price of insurance does not go down, meaning that this is just another leg of the less for more trend by insurers. The plan in its embryonic stages also promises choices for consumer as to what kind of coverage they need. Consumers are now expected to predict their own risk of needing medical services. The plan also promises fewer governmental mandates in terms of what insurers should have to cover under any offered plan.

FL can save the taxpayers money right now by tabling their "talks" and valuable representative time being spent on recycling the same old: Less for more.

Insurance is not the goal, affordable health services are the goal for consumers. If insurance does not pay for it then the insurance model is not working and a new combination of tools is necessary to provide affordable health services.

Such change requires cost controls on insurance companies and medical services providers whose inability to cut back on their own expenses and account for their own spending has contributed to increases in costs to consumers every year. Insurers and health services providers also demand that the industry preserve an increase in their earnings each year. Reform requires a diligent and public auditing process of monies spent by these stakeholders in the health services industry and caps on how much more can be charged each year.

Further, consumers, who are being asked to predict whether they will get ill and what kind of illness they will get in order to purchase the "right kind" of insurance, should not be expected to pay a single cent for defensive medicine, (helping physicians cover the cost of the risk of making mistakes) by covering over use of testing by physicians who are trying to avoid any possible liability for incompetence by sending consumers for a full battery of tests that consumers must endure and pay for in order to get treatment.

Audit, Publicize, and institute increase in cost caps.

The result of cheaper insurance coverage based on supplying less insurance coverage is simple because we're seeing it: Higher fees for routine services covered by insurance which will be accompanied with higher insurance costs for routine services, less coverage for needed medical services. We've seen this in the rise of all the non-risk coverage services covered by the alleged "insurers": drug costs specifically and what's the insurer response? Less coverage. Insurers are one song sally's ...less coverage for more dollars. Medical services providers are playing along by making more money from non-treatment services. The consumer loses in this formula and the politicians in FL will not change the formula by trying to increase the number of people buying into the game.