Phil, think about the audit. Does accuracy count for something as ungodly expensive to your employer as providing health insurance?
bernie...
If you think this through you will realized what I've said for years on this board:
Competition
is a problem...among the providers of medicine, not the insurance companies.
Generally speaking the insurance cost is direct reflection of the expense presented by the pooled risk. Using your employer as an example, they will charge what they think it will cost to provide insurance coverage for a year for your class of employees with a buffer added in for profit.
So why does the cost rise so much each year?
If the insurance company arbitrarily increased the cost, a competitor with a more realistic quote would get the business the next time around. There are
dozens upon dozens of major players in the health insurance market place so there is no shortage of choices in most cases.
The underlying cost of medicine is the primary factor, not the insurance vehicle itself.
Of course that is a necessarily basic explanation. It is more complicated than that, but not much really.
- The practice of defensive medicine (because of fear of litigation)
- The need for additional tort reform
- The need for reduction of insurance costs by way of eliminating the number of forms each provider must know and use
- Over utilization because of lack of patient concern with anything other than out-of-pocket co-pays and maybe deductibles
- Increased overall costs because uninsured patients wait till their health problem is exacerbated before seeking treatment, thereby increasing the cost for a given illness or injury
- The lack of publication of a given health care providers cost until after a bill is presented = Practically NO competitive shopping by the patients...think about that. And we wonder why the costs rise so much every year??????
- The cost shifting associated with billing your insurance carrier for the costs of those uninsured parties who are treated
- The cost associated with providing excess care, which is easily billed to the insurance company (because the patient is ONLY concerned with his or her co-pay
- ETC
Think about the above partial list. As I've repeatedly told Einstein (no offense, burnie) "it's the cost, stupid." The cost of medicine is THE primary factor in the cost of insurance, period. Yes, the cost of insurance is rising, but what does that directly reflect???
Remember this as you watch the "reform" take place: It will be increasingly "popular" to vilify the nameless, faceless, insurance industry. It is a way of saying, "We need to pass this to help you. Those evil insurance companies are screwing you." Think. Think. Think.
The present Obama plan of course, might actually eliminate insurance altogether over time, which is why you hear so much about "the Public Option." Listen carefully and you will hear members of the public tuning in to that Public Option
as what they think is going to be their ticket to "free insurance," which of course it cannot be, even under the present Obama proposal. Listen carefully and you'll hear that daily. Our legislators are aware of that desire for "free insurance."
As I've said at least a dozen times on this board, generally speaking, a contract can usually be written to provide whatever both parties agree to. Insurance contracts, generally speaking, are no different. You can have whatever you want, but someone has to pay for it. Think.
While shooting the messenger (carrier) may be an easy, popular idea, it does not serve you, Joe Citizen, at the end of the day.
It's the cost (billed by the PROVIDER OF health care, not the insurance company), stupid.
Your legislators are very tuned into the idea that you will be QUICK to shoot your insurance company as you think about this. That simplistic idea is not lost on them as they engage in the money/power grab that could go hand in hand with "reform."
Reform is coming. It is probably officially too late to turn back now. The idea that we'll "promote competition" in the private sector was given lip service and NOTHING more than lip service for decades.
We will now get exactly what we deserve for the greed displayed by the majority of unthinking Americans who, like Einstein, were perfectly satisfied to ignore the growing costs of health care in America as long as their costs were paid
by their employers.
The fact is that if you participate in the pooling of the risk (which everyone does who signs up for "insurance") then you have an obligation to help control the costs by way of awareness of what is being charged IN YOUR NAME each and every time you utilize the system
Instead, you are,
and have been for decades, primarily only concerned with your "co-pay" and deductibles. As time went by, your employer did his best to wake you up, by perhaps raising those co-pay/deductible costs to you and shifting some of the monthly premium costs to you, but you remained 'only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air' (I knew you'd like that one, burnie)
And look what happened while you were sleeping.
They've got your attention now, eh?
Just a thought on Insurance reform.
