MIT experts on the future of health-care reform: Congress should still think big

From MIT News – web.mit.edu/newsoffice

The Future of medical insurance in the US.

Just over a week ago, passage of a landmark federal health-care bill seemed a dead certainty. But the flip of a single U.S. Senate seat has changed all that, leaving the Democratic Party highly uncertain about how – or whether – to proceed. Given the current flux in Washington, a panel of MIT health-care experts assembled yesterday to assess the situation, often hammering home the idea that political half-measures will yield little in tangible health-care results.

“You can’t break this bill apart and have it work,” said MIT economist Jonathan Gruber. “It’s all or nothing at this point. The Democrats, and essentially the president, have to decide if they’re willing to go for it all, or are willing to live with nothing.”

First, though, Gruber, a central architect of the Massachusetts health-care system that has served as the model for the congressional legislation, acknowledged his extreme chagrin over the political reversal that accompanied Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown’s victory last week in the special election to replace the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. “My kids are like, ‘Why are you so sad, daddy?’” said Gruber, speaking at The Stata Center. “I explained, ‘Imagine you worked on a term paper for a year, and you were about to hand it in, when someone turned off your computer and you lost all your work.’”

Brown’s victory has caused multiple fractures among Capitol Hill Democrats. Some legislators want to drop the health-care effort entirely; others say Congress should only pass popular portions of it, such as making it illegal to deny insurance based on pre-existing conditions; and still others want to reconcile the existing, separate health-care bills already passed by the House and Senate.

Gruber made it clear he favors the last position, telling the audience the healthcare plan is like “a three-legged stool,” and “doesn’t work unless you have all three legs.” Those three pieces are reform of insurance markets (including banning those denials of coverage based on pre-existing conditions), the existence of an individual mandate requiring everyone to have insurance, and subsidies to make insurance affordable for low-income people.

For instance, simply allowing people with pre-existing conditions to sign up for insurance, Gruber argued, would be ineffective by itself. In that scenario, more people with pre-existing conditions would have coverage, rates would rise and lead healthy people to drop out of the insurance markets, and to compensate for those healthy people dropping out, insurance companies rates would raise rates further.

A hidden benefit of health insurance: Innovation

Yet even if a large-scale health-care bill passes, cutting health-care costs remains the “$2 trillion question,” said panelist Joseph Doyle, an economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Many observers have noted in the last year that regional disparities in health-care expenditures around the U.S. have nonetheless yielded similar patient-care results. But Doyle’s own research in Florida suggests otherwise. The city of Fort Lauderdale spends 30 percent more on heart patients than West Palm Beach, he stated, but has a mortality rate that is 30 percent lower. Instead, Doyle said, we would perhaps be better served by, among other things, incentives for hospitals to avoid care problems like re-hospitalization for the same illnesses: “Nobody likes to go back to the hospital.”

Still, as MIT economist Amy Finkelstein pointed out in her remarks, the value of universal health-care coverage goes beyond the medical services rendered. The introduction of Medicare in 1965, a subject she has studied in detail, produced “a dramatic decline in the share of the elderly with large out-of-the-pocket payments,” Finkelstein said, meaning that it left more senior citizens in better financial shape than they would have been without Medicare.

Moreover, Finkelstein argued, Medicare went hand-in-hand with an increase in technological innovation in the health-care sector (from procedures to devices to drugs), a scenario that could be repeated if a serious bill is passed by this Congress. “If you have insurance, the idea that whatever happens to people who are uninsured isn’t going to affect you is a very misleading notion,” Finkelstein explained. “When you increase the share of the population with insurance, you increase the market size for these technologies, and you almost surely increase the pace of development of these technologies in the future.”

But will any bill at all emerge from Congress? Political scientist Andrea Louise Campbell sounded a skeptical note. “The American political system is very status-quo-oriented,” she said, with a lot of “veto points,” such as the current Senate convention that the Democrats need 60 votes to pass the legislation.

Those 60 votes would not be necessary if Congress elected to use the reconciliation process, which would essentially mean that the House would pass the Senate bill, then have both branches of Congress modify it, which would require just 51 Senate votes in the end. Yet as Campbell noted, that would still be difficult: 47 Democratic House members represent districts that the Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, carried in the 2008 presidential election, and may be unwilling to back any health-care bill at this point.

Alternately, Campbell suggested, those representatives might prefer to pass popular-sounding segments of the health-care bill, like lifting the pre-existing conditions blockage, even if the policy results seem dubious. “What might be feasible politically, might be disastrous economically,” Campbell said. “They might pick out certain features without the counterbalancing features that make the whole package work. That might end up accelerating the unraveling of the system.”

Your Medical Insurance Providers May Not Insure You While You Travel

Should you open up your passport to the second page, you will notice a caution which states that any person who is thinking about overseas travel must research which travel medical health insurance coverage, they would require whilst they are outside the United States. For every US national travelling abroad, Medicare does not cover the medical treatment costs past the United states and US territories, apart from in rare instances in Canada and Mexico.

It may surprise you to find out that a lot of worldwide travelers travel without suitable and sufficient insurance cover. United states Government sponsored health insurance plans, like Medicare, are highly doubtful to insure any urgent medical care that you might have to receive in a overseas nation. Employer sponsored plans often retain inadequate coverage abroad, for emergency care only, just so long as you can prove the emergency. Whether you’re roaming on business or for amusement, you probably have gaps in your travel medical coverage which you’re not even aware of.

Obtaining one or two low cost or cheap intercontinental travel medical insurance rates on the internet from quite a lot of companies is very simple to do. If you’re searching for a group plan there are a small number of group insurance policies which are relatively inexpensive, and if you’re in the company of a tour group or visiting business delegation you would save a lot of cash with group travel medical insurance. Whatever compromise in the cover you prefer to make concerning the dangers and expenses, look around not only for cheap worldwide travel medical insurance policies, but also for a highly regarded company that offers you total information, has open view working and is not elusive concerning any of your queries.

If you have medical insurance coverage in the United states, evaluate the coverage that you have. Verify with your insurance issuer and clarify just what type of coverage you hold, within the existing policy. Should you deem that the provided cover is not a sufficient amount, get your travel medical insurance cover improved prior to leaving home. If you don’t already have insurance, you know how problematical things can occasionally get. Ponder how much worse it would be in a distant and strange country.

Exclusive policies for people in the profession of teaching are additionally available. Whether you are a student, a faculty member, a scholar or a researcher who is getting full-time education in a different country, you will come across international insurance that will fit your medical needs. Cover could span from one to twelve months and is renewable. Renewal of a plan will need to be prepared before the plan lapses. You could be reimbursed as much as $500,000 in medical costs through your cover.

Domestic travel insurance plans are not designed in any way to perform suitably with hospitals and doctors overseas, which could fire your frustration if you have any medical troubles while traveling.

Medical Insurance R Us is the premier resource for compare medical insurance information and medical insurance abroad on the internet. Visit the website now to get medical insurance rates information. Click on the links above to find out more.

Making California Medical Insurance Choices

California has a wide variety of medical insurance options to offer. While many people blindly accept the medical insurance coverage offered them through their employment, many others do not have this option. Luckily there are numerous companies out there that specialize in providing individual medical insurance plans. Some of the same companies that do group plans also offer individual options too. If you are without medical insurance coverage in the state of California, you can rest assured that there are lots of options out there for you. You just need to know how to choose the best one for you.

You need to take various things into consideration when looking at your medical insurance options. The most important thing to consider is your own health and how often you actually use the healthcare system. If you are healthy and almost never need to go to the doctor, you will want to look into individual medical insurance options because you will often find that they are more tailored to your needs and can even be less expensive than group plans. However, if you are one of the unlucky individuals who has chronic illness, is often ill or is suffering from a disease currently, you best option will be group health insurance. If you fall into this category, chances are you may not even be insurable on your own, therefore seize the opportunity for group coverage. Even if you could get individual coverage, chances are the premiums would be simply too high because of the risk you present to the insurer.

The region you reside in will also impact the choices you get when it comes to California medical insurance. If you live in Southern California and there are HMO facilities nearby like Kaiser-Permanente, you will have that option as well as PPO and POS plans. However if you live in any other part of the state where HMOs are not offered, your choice will be more limited.

Your personal preferences play a big role in the medical care choices you make. You may prefer to have a major amount of control over whom you see and where you are treated in terms of healthcare. If so, you will want to opt for a PPO. However if you’d rather let a primary care doctor control every aspect of your healthcare, a HMO is the way to go. Alternatively a POS or Point of Service plan is a good mix of each of these plans giving you more options and control while a primary care doctor oversees your care.

Everywhere you turn as you seek to make the right choice for your own California medical insurance you will be faced with different things to consider. If you opt to go with an individual plan, you will do best if you tailor it to your anticipated use of it. This also allows you to help it fit better into your budget. Raise deductibles and out-of-pocket limits in order to lower your premium. You can also keep the cost down by increasing the portion of the co-insurance rate that you are responsible for.

Look carefully at the myriad of things to consider before making your final decision on your California medical insurance. There is a plan out there for just about everyone.

Affordable Family Health Insurance Coverage Starts with Cost-Cutting Tips

Trying to maintain affordable healthcare costs can be frustrating. With employers cutting medical insurance plan premium costs by raising employees’ deductibles, co-pays and out-of-pocket spending limits, it becomes even more important to find ways to save money on medical costs wherever possible. You can take some steps to keep affordable medical insurance costs affordable and still get quality healthcare.

It may seem obvious, but your family health insurance costs will be lower if you take care of your health. Maintain a healthy weight, exercise, don’t smoke and get an appropriate amount of sleep at night in order to keep your body as healthy as possible. You may get lower premiums by being a non-smoker or other healthy lifestyle choices.

Understand your benefits. If you don’t have a clear understanding of what is covered and what you are responsible to pay for yourself, you may miss out on ways to save money outlined in the benefits manual.

If your plan requires you use healthcare providers within a certain network, do all you can to stay within that network. When you are seeing colleagues of your network provider, make sure they too are in the network. If you are having surgery or other team-based procedures done, find out if all the team members participate in your network. When you choose providers outside your network, you can wind up paying as much as 50% more for those services than you pay would for an in-network provider.

Negotiate! If you must see a doctor or other healthcare professional from outside your network, talk to them and ask if they will reduce their fee. Prepare yourself by talking with your insurance company’s customer service department first and find out what they pay a network physician for the service you need. Use that figure to negotiate with the out-of-network doctor. Many times, you can also get a discount rate if you can pay cash at the time of the service. It can be worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars to shop around a bit and negotiate a rate before having a procedure done.

Use a Flexible Spending Account, if you have one. Many employers offer Flexible Spending Accounts or Medical Spending Accounts that allow employees to set aside pretax earnings to be used for reimbursement of qualified medical expenses not otherwise covered by insurance. It is possible to save several hundred dollars a year by taking full advantage of a Flexible Spending Account. You can also save money at tax time by keeping track of your out-of-pocket medical expenses and they add up to more than 7.5% of your adjusted gross income.

If you are able to set aside a “self-insurance” fund and you are in good health, you may be able to switch to emergency only medical insurance coverage. Emergency medical insurance carries a high deductible. With a substantial deductible, you would use your own money to pay for things like doctor visits and prescription costs, as well as minor medical procedures and rely on your insurance in the case of larger, unexpected medical expenses. By carrying a very large deductible, your premium costs are significantly lowered, saving you money and providing you with more affordable health insurance.

You can save money on your medical insurance and keep affordable healthcare a reality but understanding your policy, utilizing employee benefits and making wise lifestyle choices.

AARP Health Insurance

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