The Independent Reviewer #6

Exploring the Wyden-Bennett option

I did the below work at the urging of Mike Wolner, a recent Senate Page.

—Fred Bannister, M.D.

Health Care Reform is front and center and finally the general population realizes:

1. We pay twice as much for our health care as other nations and live less long by five years in some cases.
2. Our economy is suffering and partially due to this terrible situation added to the economic crisis that hit us last year
3. We now have 47 million without insurance and close to 70 million if you count the underinsured.
4. The drug companies have agreed to reduce costs in any new reform bill that comes out as has the hospital association.
5. The pubic option is favored by 72% of the population and the health care industry is fighting with all their might to stop it.
6. We have a Democratic majority in the house and 60 votes in the Senate and also a popular Democratic President. You would think we have a chance. We might have but don’t depend on it just yet. The lobbyists are all on overtime. Citizens are trying through their health reform organizations but we don’t have the billions to fight back- but we always have the streets.

The drug companies will now be selling drugs to 47 million other people and getting paid and the hospital industry will now have 47 million more insured. The drug companies and hospitals both have agreed to get paid less but they have not shared with us the stats indicating they may well do better than they are now and that really it is no sacrifice. The sacrifice may indeed be genuine but until I would see the real numbers which I never expect to see I am skeptical.

The Public Option is claimed to undermine the health care industry as most people will have to take it and would probably put the insurance industry out of the health field. If indeed it does a better job that might be the best result. Business Week had an article slamming the public option last issue or to be kind warning about bad things and quoting the Lewin Group as the source of information. They maybe a great source but they also are owned by United Health Care, yes, the same one that gave their CEO a124 million dollar compensation package in 2004. With the update finished let me go to the Wyden-Bennett Health Reform Plan.

The Plan “The Healthy Americans Act” (S. 334)

The plan’s goal: Universal Health Care and lower cost.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the plan would be budget neutral by 2014. This statement is garnering support in the Congress.

1. The Plan would include state by state insurance pools and everyone participating excluding Medicare and the Military. Coverage will be same for healthy and sick and match federal employees plan through Blue Cross Blue Shield.

2. Present SCHIP and Medicaid would act as supplements if needed for some and subsidies would be available for those that need it up to 400% of poverty line.

3. 99% of all citizens would now be covered and insurance companies will now write 47 million new policies.

Details are yet to come but we must look at the following: Insurance companies function by trying to reduce risk and somehow have only healthy people-this determines much of their profit. Their number crunchers depend on this for a living and their success. Initially everyone is covered and everyone gets to pick a plan. In 2014 this will be budget neutral. This will come by reducing the subsidies so now what? Initially, the healthier and wealthier folks will pick higher deductibles they can afford working with their Health Savings accounts and of course their premiums will be less. Indeed, healthier individuals will gradually gravitate to low cost plans and will have cheaper premiums but the poor people and sick people will gravitate to higher cost plans and thus adverse selection will again occur. (Coverage will be the same as demanded by the plan) With lessening subsidies and none by 2014 or few, this does not appear feasible. It seems to me it will be very confusing and merely push off a couple of years the need for a single payer or real public plan.

The wrap around of SCHIP and Medicaid sounds like great idea except as I understand it, there are many things individually tacked on through SCHIP and Medicaid depending on the health disability and tying them uniformly to an insurance policy seems very hard for me to understand how this will work other than potentially cutting out essential things in some cases like transportation costs of some very disabled people as an example.

Mike, I have used as my source much of the material from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. I am not sure all the details of the plan are out there or even written so we will have to simply wait and watch. It appears as of today Congress may well be doing our work on health care after many years of waiting.

Thank you,

Fred Bannister, M.D.

Chairman

Board of Directors

Coalition for a Health-Secure America

fredb@healthsecurityamerica.com

Dr. Bannister is the author of the book Health Security America: Fixing the Health Care Crisis, a citizens’ guide to reforming our health care system. This is available as well as other archived health care dissertations by Dr. Bannister at

http://www.healthsecurityamerica.com

The book Health Security America is available free on the Net at:

http://www.healthsecurityamerica.com/ehsa.pdf

Please allow time for it to download.

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