'Mr. Potter says he liked his colleagues and bosses in the insurance industry, and respected them. They are not evil...'
Yet, his colleagues and bosses:
- deny requests for expensive procedures
- seizing upon a technicality to cancel the policy of someone
- raise premiums for a small business astronomically after an employee is found to have an illness that will be very expensive to treat
The insurers are open to one kind of reform — so as to give them more customers and more profits. But they don’t want the reforms that will most help patients...(instead they embrace a strategy to negate) the entire point of insurance, which is to spread risk.
Link to NYTimes Column
Link to Senate Testimony
stu friedman writes:
ReplyDeletethis is pretty telling about the insurance industry- everything we have speculated is in fact reality- it needs to be stopped
stu
i admire potter's courage, but he still did evil things - no sugar coating it.
ReplyDeleteit is telling that, eight years after the medical society class action law suits, these companies still engage in these sorts of business practices. the 'sting' of ingenix should not be readily forgotten.
cr
CR - I agree. We should not forget Ingenix. But we should not forget NGS either. How did this come down to a Hobson's Choice between the status quo and a massive federal boondoggle?
ReplyDeletePresident Obama has commented favorably on the Mayo Clinic experience. Mayo refocuses the debate.
"...The purpose of the documents is to refocus Mayo's message on health care reform, outline processes legislators can follow in making change, and define terms Mayo has been using such as a value index, said Jane Jacobs of the Mayo Clinic Health Policy Center.
"We've talked about these things for a long time, but this is us putting it together in a single place, a single document," she said.
Mayo wanted to release the documents because it's getting many questions about its health care reform positions, and the clinic also wanted to clarify its positions and outline steps to change before Congress returns in September from its August break, Jacobs said.
The documents, which number eight pages between them, focus on health insurance and Medicare payment reforms.
Mayo supports changes that would require Americans to purchase health insurance, provide sliding-scale subsidies to help those in need to buy insurance, prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions, define a minimum health benefit package or actuarial equivalent, and adjust risk levels among enrollees.
Mayo recommends an individual mandate where people can buy insurance through employers, on the individual market, through exchanges, through co-operatives, or through a model like the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan.
The Mayo documents also stress that the Medicare payment system should be reformed to create incentives for caregivers to offer the highest quality care at the most reasonable cost.
Mayo recommends that Congress set a three-year deadline for creating and implementing new Medicare payment methods including value indexing to provide an incentive to provide care of higher quality and lower cost.
Mayo also calls for bundled payments for high-cost conditions. A longer-term recommendation is to develop and implement national value-based care demonstration projects."
http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=16&a=413310
Deal-Breaker.
ReplyDeletedon't apply for the credit!
ReplyDeletethere's a lot more potential 'deal breakers' that we (as physicians) should be trying to advocate for - imo
let's stay on topic - unfair business practices of the payers and what we'd like to see as a remedy
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeletepost has been moved to 'disinformation'
ReplyDeletewhat about 'co-ordination of benefits' (COB). there's a scam if ever one existed.
ReplyDeleteSorry you think mention of the IRS is "off topic." There's nothing more "evil" imho than involving the IRS in healthcare or mandating that the IRS send our tax returns to unknown federal bureaucrats to do God Knows What with our private info. That is truly evil.
ReplyDeletethough off topic, privacy is vitally important to your blog administrators - that's why it was moved. this topic is about the abuses of the payers.
ReplyDeletei'm unaware that privacy is a divisive issue specific to health care reform. should we start a post?
it is unlikely that actual tax returns will be sent anywhere. folks would be surprised the creepy things we can find out about folks on-line though - lol
Whom do you think the government would tap to administer a government insurance program anyway? Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
ReplyDeletethe guys from goldman? lol
ReplyDeletecouldn't agree with you more!
cr