Monday, April 09, 2007

Charlie's able, Baker

A first in Massachusetts, a blog by a CEO of a health insurance company. Congratulations to Charlie Baker for Let's Talk Health Care. And he takes comments. Check it out.
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1 comment:

Ed From Emmes said...

Good for Charlie Baker. Here is an idea about how to move forward from an MD:

We need to have a single party payor for catastrophic health problems. Catastrophic health problems should be defined by expert panels that consist of people who actually practice medicine in their respective fields, (not just talk or write about it), lay people, ethicists, health economist and academics. Notice, I did not include insurance company representatives. The single party would be the federal government, (it is aready paying for such care indirectly).

We need to then have medical savings accounts with means testing for "non catastrophic health care". Individuals and families who test will have a government subsidy (part federal, part state) that will allow them to purchase a plain vanilla plan. Such a plan will insure access to a primary care provider, (industrialized countries with a high percentage of health providers who are primary care have higher health standard measurements).

The insurance companies can then provide plans that will address non catastrophic health care. The cost of such insurance should be a small percentage of current premiums and thus more affordable. They will not be allowed to participate if they attempt to exclude people on the basis of prior illness, age, sex or any other reason they dream up.

We will not make progress as long as our health care future is influenced by large publicly traded companies who preach an interest in health. The truth is, Americans are not healthier as a result of the involvement of the Aetna's and United Health Cares of the world.

April 12, 2007 9:50 AM

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