Now is the Time for Health Care Reform: A Proposal to Achieve Universal Coverage, Affordability, Quality Improvement and Market Reform
AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans)
Board of Directors’ Statement
December 2008
… the Board of Directors of America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is offering a new set of proposals aimed at moving the nation toward a restructured health care system in which no one falls through the cracks, all Americans have high quality, affordable coverage, and the efficiency and effectiveness of the system are greatly improved.
Soaring Health Care Costs Need To Be Brought Under Control
3. Streamline administrative processes to increase efficiency, make the system easier for patients and providers to navigate, and reduce costs.
Administrative processes should be streamlined across the health care system. In advancing this recommendation, we recognize the need for our industry to come to the table with proposals for how we can do our part. We have committed to develop a multi-payer online portal to give providers a uniform method to communicate with health plans and afford them access to current information on eligibility and benefits. This will ease the administrative challenges that physicians and other providers face, and will help them and their patients better understand coverage and predict out-of-pocket costs. We are also working with providers on a standard data aggregation approach with the goal of giving providers and consumers useful performance information. Administrative streamlining should be viewed through the eyes of consumers, with the goal of making the health care system easier to navigate and more consumer friendly. A key part of this effort is our focus on the reform of market rules to enhance access for consumers and provide them with clear, useable information on coverage and care options.
http://www.americanhealthsolution.org/assets/Uploads/healthcarereformproposal.pdf
As the momentum for reform builds in our nation’s capitol, the board of directors of AHIP has made the wise decision to provide a definitive statement of their concepts of reform. Very soon the future role of their industry in the financing of health care in America may well be defined by political policy makers. Obviously the industry wants policies that will ensure a robust market for their products.
Although there are many important concepts presented in their report, only the statement on administrative efficiency was selected for this message. The reason is that the private insurance industry has been a major contributor to the profound administrative waste that characterizes our dysfunctional, fragmented system of financing health care. If the private insurers are to have a legitimate role in the future of our health care system, the first requirement that we should demand of them is administrative efficiency.
Reading their proposal to “streamline administrative processes,” you have to ask yourself, what is the substance of their proposal? They are recommending a continuation of the same inefficient, fragmented structure that we now have, except that it is expanded to include everyone. Their call for a token online portal will not provide the structural reform that we need, and may actually increase the administrative burden of our financing system. The fact that they have failed to seriously address this administrative waste, largely of their own making, in and of itself should disqualify them from further participation in the reform process.
This is not to say that this report has no redeeming value. There are some worthwhile proposals. They have stressed the importance of improving our primary care infrastructure. They also have recommended an expansion of our public health infrastructure. These are much needed investments that have been neglected far too long. But the last thing that we would want to do is to superimpose private insurer administrative functions on these crucial programs. The report states “health plans are uniquely positioned to assist in this effort,” but what we need is for the insurance industry to get out of our way as we introduce these repairs to our health care delivery system.
If you still believe that the private insurers have a legitimate role in health care financing, all you need to do is read the relatively detailed section on insurance markets, public programs, and regulation. You could not possibly describe a proposal that would better serve the interests of the private insurance industry. They would create a standard of underinsurance, require all of us to purchase their products, and pretend to address affordability issues through tax credits. The private insurance industry wins the jackpot, while patients and taxpayers lose.
The AHIP board of directors must feel quite smug in having foisted off on us this con job. But wait. This is only their vision; it is not yet our reality. We can do something. We can demand reform that benefits patients and taxpayers. Do you think Washington can hear us?
