Raising money...no motive for fiscal responsiblity?

The biggest reason to oppose mandatory individual financing of health insurance is evident by no other than that outspoken Republican...Larry Kudlow who used the expression "having skin in the game" (regarding the mortgage meltdown) about four times on his evening news program of 3/31/08. In his extreme Republicanism and his alleged belief that all will be well if the market works itself out, he does not support a bailout of foreclosed mortgages. Citing the fact that individuals got loans with 0 down, he supports policies where people have "skin in the game". But in his support of all things Republican, he taps into an irony that the only ones being expected to be responsible are the only ones who support the industry, the consumer and that the other stakeholders, like spoiled children with their hands out, keep asking for more and more which is ruining our chances of achieving health care goals: affordable, accessible and quality health services whether paid for by insurance or some new economic vehicle if insurance fails.

There are three segments to the problems of fiscal responsibility in the health services sector:
1) There is no incentive for fiscal responsibility..if companies and providers can simply keep raising costs to cover their own sloppiness and passing those costs onto the consumer, there is no incentive to stop the double digit increases in costs each year.
2) If governments mandate that people have some insurance, a la another tax, there is no incentive to be responsive to consumers. Government protection of the current system without being partnered with legislative mandates regarding what insurance must cover and what limits must be imposed on charging for such insurance creates a perpetuation of the same old business model of less for more money.
3) Without effective oversight and consequences for failure, there is no incentive to stop the practice of pushing the envelope in testing how much the consumer can bear. Governmental protections for delays, errors, and deliberate tactics designed to reduce cost will not stop the process. Similarly, fraud reporting that relies on individual consumers is not an effective oversight of players in this industry.
4) Easing the way for conglomerates of insurers instead of many smaller insurance companies reduces any meaningful opportunity for competition. While Kudlow recognizes that the Bear Sterns bailout was partly due to the fact that Bear Sterns is "too big to fail" whereas the individual mortgage borrowers are less meaningful to our economy, the lack of competition makes an uneven playing field unless consumers are given a streamlined method of battling insurance industries so that they aren't bankrupt or dead by the time they finish, or by examining price-fixing and controlling the marketplace by both providers and insurers.

It's broad but let's start with some real considerations such as the AMA's ads for increased health insurance...why does it not speak about quality of that insurance? why does it supply for all the non-risk costs of tests without mandating coverage of the risk of illness, you know if the test requires something else besides another test in terms of real treatment? Time to address physician alliances with increasing health insurance coverage without equal emphasis on the quality of the health insurance policies...it's about money.

Let's require health services providers and health insurers to have some skin in the game....enough of the whining about liability limits for malpractice, around 25% of malpractice lawsuits filed result in a judgment. With odds like that, mistakes are already largely forgiven, limiting recoveries in the small percentage of flagrant cases, such as removing the wrong limb, further reduces incentives to do their jobs well. Let's have physicians have some skin in the game...you can't just keep raising the cost to the consumer for your services as a group...this really does not appear legit it appears to be what it is..price-fixing. Let's have the politicians have some skin in the game...new laws creating mandates so that insurance companies must cover risk to be called insurance companies, all the preventive distraction is not the reason people by insurance, they buy insurance for the unknown expenses, not the known.

So, surprisingly, I agree with Mr. Kudlow regarding health insurance...let's have the providers, the insurers and the government get some skin in the game.