Out-dated Health Insurance Plan

A healthcare policies expert, Dr. Magee, brings the audience’s attention to the problems of today’s health insurance system. On October 25th, he wrote an article titled, Employer-Based Health Care: We Have to Think Long Term, on his blog. He reveals the fact that 63% of American citizens are dependent on employer-based health insurance, which sounds to be an out-dated system. By providing several links to some suggested solutions, he invites us to think about this issue together: consumer-directed health care plans, health savings accounts, and universal health care.

Joshua Kendall, a journalist from The Boston Globe, wrote a related article, covering various attempts to renovate the health insurance plan in the United States. The article introduces the birth of current health insurance system. This goes back to President Roosevelt era, when the nation was suffering from a severe inflation. Constricted by Wage and Price Control Legislation, the one benefit the competing companies could provide was the health insurance. Click here for more comprehensive explanation.
Even today, nine out of ten people who have health insurance are covered by their employers. This means that if they lose their jobs, they will not have any health insurance covered anymore. This doesn’t sound fitting to today’s world where people change their jobs more frequently, and small businesses take up greater part of economy.

There have been several efforts to renew this system. “Two years ago, the Bush administration introduced Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), which combine low-cost catastrophic coverage with a tax-free savings account to pay for medical expenses.” Another prominent economist also shared his point of view. Paul Pilzer believes that the government should “let consumers spend their own money” in order to prevent waste; he argues that “patients often opt for unnecessary drugs or medical tests simply because their health plans foot the bulk of the bill.”
Meanwhile, from the liberal’s perspective, the government should take charge of this issue and solve the problem for the uninsured with providing private options for those who can afford the better plans. Fernandopulle proposed to copy the British system, “where the public sector offers a basic plan to everyone, but where there is also private insurance.”

This fall, Massachusetts government is taking an experimental action. Governor Mitt Romney attempts to “facilitate more affordable basic health insurance and then require individuals to buy coverage for themselves with subsidies for low income residents.” Many experts, including Len Nichols, a health policy analyst at the New America Foundation, will be watching Massachusetts test case carefully to find a nationwide solution from this result.