Cigna is no longer simply one of the largest, for-profit, private insurance corporations in the nation, it is now a component of the health care delivery system. From the Cigna Medical Group website: “CIGNA is the only managed care organization in Arizona that operates multi-specialty centers designed to help you conveniently receive care and move on with your busy day.”

Medicaid, being a welfare program with piddling political support, has been chronically underfunded. Yet, in the reform legislation, expansion of Medicaid eligibility is one of the more salient policies, designed to extend Medicaid coverage to perhaps 17 million more individuals. Will we have enough willing primary care professionals to take care of them?

The managed care revolution brought us restricted networks of physicians, hospitals and other health care services. These restrictions, which limited patients’ choices of their health care professionals and facilities, did produce a one-time notch in the curve of rising health care costs. The insurers did this by contracting lower rates with health care providers, and then imposing financial penalties on patients who chose their care outside of the networks.

Private employers have continued to shift more of the costs of health care to their individual employees. This has had deleterious financial and health impacts since it has made health care access less affordable. Now, even with union representation, public employees also are experiencing deterioration in their coverage.

“Health Insurance Exchanges and the Affordable Care Act: Key Policy Issues,” by Timothy Stoltzfus Jost, should be read in full (44 pages) by everyone who cares about the future of our health care system. The Executive Summary alone is not adequate to understand the implications of the issues he discusses. Every page requires attentive reading since each is covered with red flags, far too many to cover in a qotd commentary.

Regular readers of the Quote of the Day have seen this theme expressed relentlessly in these weekday messages: We are experiencing a massive shift to underinsurance products, and this policy of making individuals sensitive to health care costs through greater out-of-pocket spending has long been on the agenda of the conservatives.

The British National Health Service (NHS) is one of the most effective health care systems in the world. That is a remarkable achievement considering that they devote only half as much funds to their health care as does the United States (percent of GDP in 2008: UK 8.7% versus US 16.0%). Yet in their white paper, “Equity and excellence: Liberating the NHS,” the Conservative government of Prime Minister David Cameron states, “the NHS productivity challenge may prompt calls during this Parliament for even bigger increases in NHS resources; but the reality is that there is no more money.”

Now that Congress has codified a permanent role in health care for the private insurance industry, what will be the next entrepreneurial innovations of the private insurance/managed care industry? “Plan-provider collaborations” that are “not easy” but “very rewarding when done right.” Be afraid. Be very afraid!

“Accountable care organization” (ACO) is an abstract concept of organizing health care providers into single entities that are responsible for delivering a broad continuum of care for specific patients, while bearing financial risk for the care provided. Moving beyond that abstraction, there really isn’t much new on the policy front.

This calculator is useful for determining anticipated individual and family costs for insurance premiums plus out-of-pocket expenses for plans obtained through the insurance exchanges, if execution of the program is optimal.