The President’s Council on Bioethics
June 26, 2008

Chairman Edmund Pellegrino: This afternoon we’re going to look at the ethical questions from the point of view of people who are involved in designing and propagating and thinking about various programs to which we referred.

***

Chairman Pellegrino: I’m going to move ahead and ask each of these panelists to briefly state why they think — I hope this isn’t too aggressive a question — why they think the program that they’re most closely associated with is a morally acceptable one.

Stephanie Woolhandler, M.D: Well, I think that the single-payer proposal is the only ethical one on the table because it’s the only one with proven effectiveness. I think that many of these proposals up here are known to be ineffective. They’ve been tried, and they failed. Perhaps the best you could say about some of them is they’re an experimental treatment. So I just think if we’re concerned about 18,000 deaths each year from lack of health insurance, we’re actually obligated from a moral point of view to go with something that’s proven, which would be some form of nonprofit national health insurance.

Len Nichols, Ph.D.: — my interpretation of Leviticus… In my view, health care has become like food, a unique gift. We absolutely know people will die without it. It was unacceptable to let people starve back then. It’s unacceptable to let people go without health care now. In my view, those are morally equivalent. But what I love about the gleaning metaphor in Leviticus is that it does not say, “Give the same amount of food to every person.” It does not say, “Give all the food to one person who happens to be hungry.” It does not say, “Bring the poor home and cook for them.” It says, “Leave the food in the field, and the poor have to go get it.” So there’s a mutual obligation. There’s a mutual responsibility, and that’s why I see that reflected perfectly in the combination of personal responsibility, including individual mandate to purchase, and shared responsibility, that is, to make it possible for each individual to achieve their own objective.

James Capretta: Well, I think the program I put forward is the ethically appropriate way to proceed for several reasons. First and foremost, the more that financial resources are put in the hands of patients and consumers to make decisions, the more the system is responsive to those patients and consumers. …it’s the most practically plausible and workable approach. …it doesn’t cede to the federal government all centralized control. And, finally, controlling costs is either a matter of efficiency or queuing, in a sense. And market incentives, financial incentives with oversight can get to more efficiency, trying to do things where people decide on their own that this is less valuable than the price we’ve been paying and not doing it anymore.

***

Dr. Schneider: And many of the people have spoken with extraordinary confidence and force and have been quite willing to say that the alternatives to their program are highly unsatisfactory. These arguments are all based on data and empirical evidence and arguments that we are entirely incompetent to evaluate.

Dr. Woolhandler: I don’t understand your point. Why would you be incompetent to evaluate these arguments?

***

Dr. Woolhandler: I’m again just a little amazed at the comment that this group is not prepared to decide on these questions. There are so many IQ points in this room, and people spend so much time thinking about ethics. I mean, the material I present is not rocket science. The Rand study is not rocket science, either. There’s a book about this [holding her fingers about an inch apart] thick that you could probably read in an evening if you want to read it yourself. So I think saying we’re not prepared to decide is actually saying we’re going to step away from a problem that we recognize is very serious and is resulting in 50 deaths today as we meet here and 18,000 deaths a year in the United States.

***

Prof. Lawler: Dr. Woolhandler seemed to have this ethical theory that when it comes to medical care there should be no exchange of money. So co-pays are immoral. Deductibles are immoral. Whereas your other two, to some extent or another, think actually to introduce a bit of cash here is helpful because understanding yourself as a consumer makes the person delivering the product more responsive and introduces choice.

Dr. Woolhandler: I’ve seen people die because of co-payments and deductibles. Co-payments and deductibles were studied in the Rand experiment. They’ve been studied a couple of times in Canada where they’ve introduced small co-payments and deductibles, and they always have the same effect. Rich people are not affected by them a bit. Low-income people get less care. They get less elective unnecessary care. They also get less life-saving and completely necessary care, and that’s the basis on which I think they’re immoral.

***

Prof. Dresser: For Dr. Woolhandler , I’m probably mangling this philosophically, but I think Kant said, “Ought implies can.” And so, you know, I love your idea, and if I were queen of the world or the US I would say, “Okay. Go for it.” But I just wonder, if it’s not realistic in this country, then it’s a placebo. So how do you think we’re going to get from here to where you are politically?

Dr. Woolhandler: Well, I think the argument you’re making is politics is the art of the possible. But I actually disagree with that. I actually think politics is the art of creating the possible, and what’s possible is what people believe is possible.

So who would have believed before Rosa Parks that we would have a civil rights movement and a Civil Rights Act? Who would have believed in the mid-1980s that the Soviet Union was about to collapse?

So you can’t just sit here and say based on what you’re seeing today that no change is possible. We’ve got to create the possible, which I think is a challenge to this group and, you know, partly why I reacted so strongly to the suggestion you couldn’t understand it or come to grips with it.

You have tremendous moral suasion. You have the power as a group to make a statement that universal health care is the only ethical policy alternative and that the only proven way to get universal health care is through nonprofit national health insurance.

If you went public with that, you would be creating the possible. You know, you would be creating the possible and helping people believe that this real change is possible. And when I look at those polls about the American people, the American people say they want national health insurance.

It’s not that the people don’t agree. It’s the insurance industry that’s blocked this from debate. They’ve used their full political power and economic power to block it and, frankly, the pharmaceutical industry, as well. And they’ve always opposed this.

And when I first got in this business I was shocked about the pharmaceutical industry opposing it. Well, it turns out they knew something that the American people just learned later, which is every nation with national health insurance negotiates for price discounts on drugs. They knew that, and they were completely and totally opposed to any sort of national health insurance covering drugs because they were going to get lower prices.

So we’ve got the American people endorsing it. We’ve got some very powerful folks opposing it. We need to get it on the agenda, and (it’s) the one real power you have and you can use it, or you can turn your back and say, “We don’t understand this.” You can use that power to put this on the political agenda.

http://www.bioethics.gov/transcripts/june08/session3.html
continued:
http://www.bioethics.gov/transcripts/june08/session4.html

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

After the November election, it is expected that the President’s Council on Bioethics will release a report on ethical considerations for reforming health care.

The Council was formed in 2001 in response to the controversy over President Bush’s decision to deny funds for embryonic stem cell research. With a touch of irony for which this administration is famous, many thought that political ethics were compromised in the selection of supposed ethicists who had already expressed biases incompatible with the ability to objectively assess important issues of bioethics. When one of the members of the Council states that they are incompetent to assess the ethical issues in the reform proposals, it does make you wonder.

It is difficult to know what the report will state, but some of the more enlightened members of the Council clearly do understand the moral imperative behind Steffie Woolhandler’s message. It would be nice if their views, based on actual ethical principles, would prevail in the final report. Regardless, it is really Steffie’s message that is important.

Medicare Part D: Drug Pricing and Manufacturer Windfalls

By the Majority Staff
United States House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
July 2008
Conclusion
This analysis of confidential data on Medicare Part D and Medicaid drug prices shows that the private Medicare Part D insurers pay significantly higher prices for prescription drugs than does the Medicaid program. In the case of the six million dual eligible beneficiaries, the Medicare Part D insurers paid $3.7 billion more in 2006 and 2007 to purchase the top 100 drugs for dual eligible beneficiaries than they would have paid if they had access to the lower Medicaid drug prices. This increase in costs represents a windfall to drug manufacturers.
Eliminating the drug manufacturer windfall would realize substantial savings to federal taxpayers. Over the next ten years, taxpayers would save $86 billion if the Medicare Part D insurers paid Medicaid prices for drugs used by the dual eligible beneficiaries. If Medicare negotiated directly with drug manufacturers and obtained prices equivalent to the Medicaid prices for all Medicare beneficiaries, the potential savings to taxpayers increases to $156 billion.
http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20080724101850.pdf

And…

Apples, Oranges and “Windfalls”

Republican Staff Analysis
Conclusion
The Part D benefit was designed to offer choice in prescription drug insurance, value for seniors through low negotiated prices, and overall low program costs for taxpayers. It is achieving those goals and exceeding expectations. The Majority report fails to recognize these benefits and instead makes inappropriate and unrealistic price comparisons. Politically appealing but substantively flawed changes like those advocated by the Majority would have serious implications for the prices paid by employers, unions, health care providers, and the uninsured. Likewise, changing the financial incentives in Part D could have a negative impact in the type of drug research and development that is conducted.
Finally, it is worth noting that the Majority has written eight reports on Part D and the program is only in its third year. This represents a significant level of oversight. Without a doubt Medicare requires substantial oversight given its importance to seniors and its uncertain long-term financial prospects. However, the Majority’s criticisms of Part D seem misplaced. Part D costs substantially less than Part A (which primarily pays for hospital based care) and Part B (which primarily pays for physician services). The Hospital Insurance trust fund, Part A’s revenue source, is not adequately financed in the short-term and will be exhausted in 2019. This looming financial crisis has received scant oversight from the Majority.
http://republicans.oversight.house.gov/Media/PDFs/20080723PartDReport.pdf

To understand the basis for the problems with the Medicare Part D drug benefit, you need only to recall that the program was designed by the Medicare privatizers in Congress, with the support of two of the largest lobby interests in the nation: the private insurers and the pharmaceutical firms.
There are a great many problems that have been created by the privatization measures in the Medicare Modernization Act, but here we will limit the discussion not to just the Part D program, but to only one aspect of Part D: the application of Part D to dual-eligibles.
Dual-eligible Medicare beneficiaries are those individuals who not only qualify for Medicare based on age or long-term disabilities, but they also qualify for Medicaid based on their very low incomes. Before Medicare Part D was enacted, they received their drugs through the state-administered Medicaid programs. This worked well for the taxpayers because of the ability of the government to negotiate much lower drug prices, and it worked well for the patients because they received their necessary medications usually without any out-of-pocket expense.
The privatizers were successful in shifting the state-run Medicaid drug benefit into the Part D program. Because the drug benefit for the dual-eligibles is still subsidized, the cost impact was not that great for the beneficiaries, though the administrative hassles, including the need to comply with various formularies offered by the different plans, proved to be more than just an inconvenience.
The taxpayers did not fare at all well with this shift into the Part D program. This study by the Majority Staff demonstrates that taxpayers paid $3,739,000,000 more to the drug manufacturers for the top 100 drugs than they would have under the Medicaid drug program which this replaced. The Republican Staff response glosses over this very real additional cost foisted onto taxpayers.
The Republican response obfuscates and segues into Part A hospital funding – an important problem but not the subject at hand. Buried in their response, the Republicans do state that if the drug benefit for the dual-eligible population were returned to the Medicaid program, “this population would have access to Medicaid price controls and pharmaceutical manufacturers no longer would be benefiting from the purported windfall profits.” Of course they wouldn’t; the taxpayers would benefit.
This example shows once again that health policy science is not complicated. It’s the politics that are so difficult. One side is represented by individuals who want everyone to have affordable access to the health care that they need, and the other side is more interested in enhancing the private sector through measures such as ensuring windfall profits for the pharmaceutical firms.
One thing great about America is that it is our choice… but we do have to make a greater effort to be certain that everyone is making an informed choice.

By the Majority Staff
United States House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
July 2008

Conclusion

This analysis of confidential data on Medicare Part D and Medicaid drug prices shows that the private Medicare Part D insurers pay significantly higher prices for prescription drugs than does the Medicaid program. In the case of the six million dual eligible beneficiaries, the Medicare Part D insurers paid $3.7 billion more in 2006 and 2007 to purchase the top 100 drugs for dual eligible beneficiaries than they would have paid if they had access to the lower Medicaid drug prices. This increase in costs represents a windfall to drug manufacturers.

Eliminating the drug manufacturer windfall would realize substantial savings to federal taxpayers. Over the next ten years, taxpayers would save $86 billion if the Medicare Part D insurers paid Medicaid prices for drugs used by the dual eligible beneficiaries. If Medicare negotiated directly with drug manufacturers and obtained prices equivalent to the Medicaid prices for all Medicare beneficiaries, the potential savings to taxpayers increases to $156 billion.

http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20080724101850.pdf

And…

Apples, Oranges and “Windfalls”

Republican Staff Analysis

Conclusion

The Part D benefit was designed to offer choice in prescription drug insurance, value for seniors through low negotiated prices, and overall low program costs for taxpayers. It is achieving those goals and exceeding expectations. The Majority report fails to recognize these benefits and instead makes inappropriate and unrealistic price comparisons. Politically appealing but substantively flawed changes like those advocated by the Majority would have serious implications for the prices paid by employers, unions, health care providers, and the uninsured. Likewise, changing the financial incentives in Part D could have a negative impact in the type of drug research and development that is conducted.

Finally, it is worth noting that the Majority has written eight reports on Part D and the program is only in its third year. This represents a significant level of oversight. Without a doubt Medicare requires substantial oversight given its importance to seniors and its uncertain long-term financial prospects. However, the Majority’s criticisms of Part D seem misplaced. Part D costs substantially less than Part A (which primarily pays for hospital based care) and Part B (which primarily pays for physician services). The Hospital Insurance trust fund, Part A’s revenue source, is not adequately financed in the short-term and will be exhausted in 2019. This looming financial crisis has received scant oversight from the Majority.

http://republicans.oversight.house.gov/Media/PDFs/20080723PartDReport.pdf

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

To understand the basis for the problems with the Medicare Part D drug benefit, you need only to recall that the program was designed by the Medicare privatizers in Congress, with the support of two of the largest lobby interests in the nation: the private insurers and the pharmaceutical firms.

There are a great many problems that have been created by the privatization measures in the Medicare Modernization Act, but here we will limit the discussion not to just the Part D program, but to only one aspect of Part D: the application of Part D to dual-eligibles.

Dual-eligible Medicare beneficiaries are those individuals who not only qualify for Medicare based on age or long-term disabilities, but they also qualify for Medicaid based on their very low incomes. Before Medicare Part D was enacted, they received their drugs through the state-administered Medicaid programs. This worked well for the taxpayers because of the ability of the government to negotiate much lower drug prices, and it worked well for the patients because they received their necessary medications usually without any out-of-pocket expense.

The privatizers were successful in shifting the state-run Medicaid drug benefit into the Part D program. Because the drug benefit for the dual-eligibles is still subsidized, the cost impact was not that great for the beneficiaries, though the administrative hassles, including the need to comply with various formularies offered by the different plans, proved to be more than just an inconvenience.

The taxpayers did not fare at all well with this shift into the Part D program. This study by the Majority Staff demonstrates that taxpayers paid $3,739,000,000 more to the drug manufacturers for the top 100 drugs than they would have under the Medicaid drug program which this replaced. The Republican Staff response glosses over this very real additional cost foisted onto taxpayers.

The Republican response obfuscates and segues into Part A hospital funding – an important problem but not the subject at hand. Buried in their response, the Republicans do state that if the drug benefit for the dual-eligible population were returned to the Medicaid program, “this population would have access to Medicaid price controls and pharmaceutical manufacturers no longer would be benefiting from the purported windfall profits.” Of course they wouldn’t; the taxpayers would benefit.

This example shows once again that health policy science is not complicated. It’s the politics that are so difficult. One side is represented by individuals who want everyone to have affordable access to the health care that they need, and the other side is more interested in enhancing the private sector through measures such as ensuring windfall profits for the pharmaceutical firms.

One thing great about America is that it is our choice… but we do have to make a greater effort to be certain that everyone is making an informed choice.

Medicare Part D: Drug Pricing and Manufacturer Windfalls

By the Majority Staff
United States House of Representatives
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
July 2008

Conclusion

This analysis of confidential data on Medicare Part D and Medicaid drug prices shows that the private Medicare Part D insurers pay significantly higher prices for prescription drugs than does the Medicaid program. In the case of the six million dual eligible beneficiaries, the Medicare Part D insurers paid $3.7 billion more in 2006 and 2007 to purchase the top 100 drugs for dual eligible beneficiaries than they would have paid if they had access to the lower Medicaid drug prices. This increase in costs represents a windfall to drug manufacturers.

Eliminating the drug manufacturer windfall would realize substantial savings to federal taxpayers. Over the next ten years, taxpayers would save $86 billion if the Medicare Part D insurers paid Medicaid prices for drugs used by the dual eligible beneficiaries. If Medicare negotiated directly with drug manufacturers and obtained prices equivalent to the Medicaid prices for all Medicare beneficiaries, the potential savings to taxpayers increases to $156 billion.

http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20080724101850.pdf

And…

Apples, Oranges and “Windfalls”

Republican Staff Analysis

Conclusion

The Part D benefit was designed to offer choice in prescription drug insurance, value for seniors through low negotiated prices, and overall low program costs for taxpayers. It is achieving those goals and exceeding expectations. The Majority report fails to recognize these benefits and instead makes inappropriate and unrealistic price comparisons. Politically appealing but substantively flawed changes like those advocated by the Majority would have serious implications for the prices paid by employers, unions, health care providers, and the uninsured. Likewise, changing the financial incentives in Part D could have a negative impact in the type of drug research and development that is conducted.

Finally, it is worth noting that the Majority has written eight reports on Part D and the program is only in its third year. This represents a significant level of oversight. Without a doubt Medicare requires substantial oversight given its importance to seniors and its uncertain long-term financial prospects. However, the Majority’s criticisms of Part D seem misplaced. Part D costs substantially less than Part A (which primarily pays for hospital based care) and Part B (which primarily pays for physician services). The Hospital Insurance trust fund, Part A’s revenue source, is not adequately financed in the short-term and will be exhausted in 2019. This looming financial crisis has received scant oversight from the Majority.

http://republicans.oversight.house.gov/Media/PDFs/20080723PartDReport.pdf

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

To understand the basis for the problems with the Medicare Part D drug benefit, you need only to recall that the program was designed by the Medicare privatizers in Congress, with the support of two of the largest lobby interests in the nation: the private insurers and the pharmaceutical firms.

There are a great many problems that have been created by the privatization measures in the Medicare Modernization Act, but here we will limit the discussion not to just the Part D program, but to only one aspect of Part D: the application of Part D to dual-eligibles.

Dual-eligible Medicare beneficiaries are those individuals who not only qualify for Medicare based on age or long-term disabilities, but they also qualify for Medicaid based on their very low incomes. Before Medicare Part D was enacted, they received their drugs through the state-administered Medicaid programs. This worked well for the taxpayers because of the ability of the government to negotiate much lower drug prices, and it worked well for the patients because they received their necessary medications usually without any out-of-pocket expense.

The privatizers were successful in shifting the state-run Medicaid drug benefit into the Part D program. Because the drug benefit for the dual-eligibles is still subsidized, the cost impact was not that great for the beneficiaries, though the administrative hassles, including the need to comply with various formularies offered by the different plans, proved to be more than just an inconvenience.

The taxpayers did not fare at all well with this shift into the Part D program. This study by the Majority Staff demonstrates that taxpayers paid $3,739,000,000 more to the drug manufacturers for the top 100 drugs than they would have under the Medicaid drug program which this replaced. The Republican Staff response glosses over this very real additional cost foisted onto taxpayers.

The Republican response obfuscates and segues into Part A hospital funding – an important problem but not the subject at hand. Buried in their response, the Republicans do state that if the drug benefit for the dual-eligible population were returned to the Medicaid program, “this population would have access to Medicaid price controls and pharmaceutical manufacturers no longer would be benefiting from the purported windfall profits.” Of course they wouldn’t; the taxpayers would benefit.

This example shows once again that health policy science is not complicated. It’s the politics that are so difficult. One side is represented by individuals who want everyone to have affordable access to the health care that they need, and the other side is more interested in enhancing the private sector through measures such as ensuring windfall profits for the pharmaceutical firms.

One thing great about America is that it is our choice… but we do have to make a greater effort to be certain that everyone is making an informed choice.

The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act — A Half-Step toward Risk Sharing

By Russell Korobkin, J.D., and Rahul Rajkumar, M.D., J.D.
The New England Journal of Medicine
July 24, 2008
Consider three Americans — one with an increased genetic risk for colon cancer, one with a family history of colon cancer, and one with a colonoscopic finding of several large adenomatous polyps. Under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which was recently signed into law by President George W. Bush, health insurance companies may not refuse to cover and may not raise premiums for the first two people, whose genetic information or family history puts them at higher risk for colon cancer. Insurers could, however, refuse to sell the third person an individual policy or could quadruple his or her premiums. If the third person is enrolled in an employer-sponsored group health plan, insurers could raise the rates for everyone in the group.
In making such distinctions, GINA is emblematic of this country’s piecemeal and inconsistent approach to health care policy, which makes little sense and leaves many Americans without access to care or in danger of financial ruin if they seek care. Our recent history is replete with examples of similar half-measures in health policy.
One response would be to retreat from the egalitarian impulse of GINA and leave health insurance to market forces, as we do with consumer goods. Health insurance risk would be priced as accurately as technology permitted, and patients would pay their own expected medical costs in premiums.
The better solution is to fully embrace the basic ethic of GINA and admit that the law’s distinction between genetic information and other immutable characteristics is arbitrary.
The arbitrary nature of the categories GINA creates suggests that we should fully commit ourselves to the step that the legislation approaches but is too hesitant to take: the prohibition of medical underwriting — the rating and pricing of health insurance on the basis of any health information, not just genetic information. Health insurance premiums should be assessed on the basis of a “community rate” and should be set the same for all people within a given age group — possibly with exceptions somehow made for risk factors that are deemed to be within each person’s reasonable control.
Moreover, to ensure that the costs of bad health are shared equitably, all Americans would have to be in the same risk pool. This would mean enacting a health insurance mandate either for employers or, if health insurance could be made affordable, for individuals — and specifying a minimum set of benefits that everyone would be required to have. Given the growing disparity between the cost of modern medicine and the incomes of many Americans, enforcing such a mandate would be difficult. Even with income-based subsidies, an individual mandate could place an undue financial burden on many families. Nonetheless, bringing everyone into the same risk pool is an important long-term goal.
With such reforms, GINA could become the first step toward a just and sustainable health insurance system. This approach would recognize that, because many of the most important determinants of health are beyond people’s reasonable control, no one should have to bear the costs of health care alone.
http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/4/335

The need for the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act was obvious. The members of Congress recognized that it would be unfair for private insurers to discriminate against individuals based on their family history or genetic makeup. What is perhaps not so obvious is why Congress chose to ignore all other forms of discrimination by private insurers.
As this article states, medical underwriting should be prohibited in order to permanently eliminate private insurer discrimination. Then a universal risk pool must be established to distribute risk equitably. But for that to work, the authors acknowledge that there must be a mandate that everyone participates.
In recommending community rating and a mandate to participate, the authors further acknowledge that, even with subsidies, reform based on private plans will still place an undue financial burden on many families. That is still a form of discrimination.
What is it that holds back these authors, members of Congress, and others in the health policy community from stating the obvious? Legislating and regulating the private insurance industry may reduce but will never eliminate insurer discrimination; adopting a publicly-funded, single payer national health program would. Why do they choke up when that’s what they need to say?

By Russell Korobkin, J.D., and Rahul Rajkumar, M.D., J.D.
The New England Journal of Medicine
July 24, 2008

Consider three Americans — one with an increased genetic risk for colon cancer, one with a family history of colon cancer, and one with a colonoscopic finding of several large adenomatous polyps. Under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA), which was recently signed into law by President George W. Bush, health insurance companies may not refuse to cover and may not raise premiums for the first two people, whose genetic information or family history puts them at higher risk for colon cancer. Insurers could, however, refuse to sell the third person an individual policy or could quadruple his or her premiums. If the third person is enrolled in an employer-sponsored group health plan, insurers could raise the rates for everyone in the group.

In making such distinctions, GINA is emblematic of this country’s piecemeal and inconsistent approach to health care policy, which makes little sense and leaves many Americans without access to care or in danger of financial ruin if they seek care. Our recent history is replete with examples of similar half-measures in health policy.

One response would be to retreat from the egalitarian impulse of GINA and leave health insurance to market forces, as we do with consumer goods. Health insurance risk would be priced as accurately as technology permitted, and patients would pay their own expected medical costs in premiums.

The better solution is to fully embrace the basic ethic of GINA and admit that the law’s distinction between genetic information and other immutable characteristics is arbitrary.

The arbitrary nature of the categories GINA creates suggests that we should fully commit ourselves to the step that the legislation approaches but is too hesitant to take: the prohibition of medical underwriting — the rating and pricing of health insurance on the basis of any health information, not just genetic information. Health insurance premiums should be assessed on the basis of a “community rate” and should be set the same for all people within a given age group — possibly with exceptions somehow made for risk factors that are deemed to be within each person’s reasonable control.

Moreover, to ensure that the costs of bad health are shared equitably, all Americans would have to be in the same risk pool. This would mean enacting a health insurance mandate either for employers or, if health insurance could be made affordable, for individuals — and specifying a minimum set of benefits that everyone would be required to have. Given the growing disparity between the cost of modern medicine and the incomes of many Americans, enforcing such a mandate would be difficult. Even with income-based subsidies, an individual mandate could place an undue financial burden on many families. Nonetheless, bringing everyone into the same risk pool is an important long-term goal.

With such reforms, GINA could become the first step toward a just and sustainable health insurance system. This approach would recognize that, because many of the most important determinants of health are beyond people’s reasonable control, no one should have to bear the costs of health care alone.

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/359/4/335

Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

The need for the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act was obvious. The members of Congress recognized that it would be unfair for private insurers to discriminate against individuals based on their family history or genetic makeup. What is perhaps not so obvious is why Congress chose to ignore all other forms of discrimination by private insurers.

As this article states, medical underwriting should be prohibited in order to permanently eliminate private insurer discrimination. Then a universal risk pool must be established to distribute risk equitably. But for that to work, the authors acknowledge that there must be a mandate that everyone participates.

In recommending community rating and a mandate to participate, the authors further acknowledge that, even with subsidies, reform based on private plans will still place an undue financial burden on many families. That is still a form of discrimination.

What is it that holds back these authors, members of Congress, and others in the health policy community from stating the obvious? Legislating and regulating the private insurance industry may reduce but will never eliminate insurer discrimination; adopting a publicly-funded, single payer national health program would. Why do they choke up when that’s what they need to say?