Convener/Scribe: Diana Woodall Cally’s B 1 pm
Attendees: Diana Woodall, Jean Buono, Bruce Lundeen, Holly Watts
People have so confused many issues. Health care insurance is not health care. The current system is so dysfunctional that consumers (potential customers of your business) are paying so much for health care insurance they don’t have the extra money to spend at your business. For example, one of us knows someone who was recently laid off and is now paying $942/mo for insurance for himself and his wife. In another case, a local family had to choose between the mortgage and health insurance–and chose the mortgage.
Businesses are not able to attract new employees unless they are able to offer a very attractive health insurance benefit package. Often the first question a prospective employee will ask is about the health insurance.
Perhaps a single-payer universal health care coverage reform would enable us to get away from insurance being tied to employment. Two of us thought that single-payer universal coverage is the only way to go.
What’s needed is government regulation of the health insurance industry. It’s not about the “government telling you which doctor you can go to.” Right now, it’s the insurance industry that does that by refusing to pay for some treatments and excluding pre-existing conditions.
One of the functions of the federal government is to get involved with issues (like transportation) that cross state lines. . Right now insurance companies cannot do business across state lines. But we cross state lines all the time. One of us knows a VA resident who had to go to the emergency room in California, but before she could be treated, Blue Cross in VA had to be contacted for pre-approval. In another case, a woman in CA who is very ill, cannot come to VA to visit family w/o risking the loss of her insurance.
There is so much fraud in the Medicare system. Mark Warner has signed on to amendment to the Senate bill that would address some of the issues of fraud and cost containment. But, like many other aspects of the Senate bill, it is hard to understand exactly what the amendment says.
One of the sections that IS clear, Sec 3607 of the Value and Innovation Amendment, calls for a National Diabetes Prevention Program. This would create new jobs! More is needed in preventative healthcare. . .but as long as folks are spending so much on health insurance, they don’t have the extra money to pay for preventative health care.
Going forward, it’s unclear how health care reform will proceed in the Congress. Perhaps individual components of the reform bills need to be passed separately. We all agreed on the following reforms:
- regulate insurance companies, and allow them to do business across state lines.
- no pre-existing condition exclusion
- allow self-employed or unemployed individuals to buy insurance at the same rate as individuals in a group.
We also spoke about the need for torte reform and reducing fraud in the Medicare system. (according to a letter from Mark Warner dated Jan 15 2010, Medicare will be insolvent by 2017).
I think we’ve lost sight of the big picture of what group insurance is supposed to be–a pooling of risks, not cherry-picking which people to include. And we as a culture seem to have lost a sense of the common good. I once met a woman who, in her 70’s, chose not to have a knee replacement surgery because she didn’t think it would be a “good return on the investment” for the people who contributed to her insurance policy! How many people are thinking like that?
No action items were discussed other than keep calling Warner and Webb
