Private health insurance and the National Health Care Bill part 3
The author, Ted Wolk, has over 30 years experience in the life and health insurance industry, looks at the National Health Care Bill and shares his thoughts on the core problems related to this Issue. PART 3
We are not identifying the real problems facing our health care.
These so called politicians are just that, and they have no business sense or economics sense. They are on a feeding frenzy like a pack of sharks. They are selling us hype. They are all dealing under the mob mentality syndrome. (If you don’t know how that works. Please look it up on the internet) and they are now wanting to add another bucket of money to their coffers and drag us, the taxpayers into it.
Why do we have a bill that is over 2100 pages in length? Because you have over 400 politicians writing a bill, and they have to all protect their own interests instead of the interests of all the American citizens. Otherwise it would probably be limited to 10 percent of those pages.
As usual our government leaders are dealing in a reactive way rather than a proactive way. Think about it, they are attacking the problem from the wrong direction. They are treating the problems rather than fixing the problems. Just like someone having to clean water out of their basement every time it rains, rather than fixing the crack in basement wall. The problems need to be fixed first.
And herein lays the problem, no one wants to be accountable and attack or control the real core problems. No one is even discussing how we remove or control all the issues that are creating the higher costs. If we could make them more manageable and control them, then insurance companies could probably offer more lucrative coverage, which would result in the spreading of the risk, (more people owning and paying) which would then result in more people affording it. The National health Bill is trying to somewhat do this, but they are approaching it from the wrong direction. Their concept and approach only adds more fuel to the fire.
Some more problems
It is a known fact that certain doctors continue to have and refer patients for unneeded tests and procedures. Who is suppose to slap their hands and say stop that. And how many specialty clinics do we really need to have? These just continue to drive up doctor’s overhead and operating costs.
Hospitals and doctors’ offices can sometimes over bill or double bill patients. Who watch’s out for the patient? Who audits the bill? When they send the patients bills to the insurance companies, the patient don’t care what’s on that bill as long as it is paid. Who takes ownership of these problems?
Additionally, each and every doctor sends out their own bill and there is no uniformity. Because of this, unless the patient is a CPA, they cannot figure those bills out. (Been there, done that. it’s a nightmare)
Malpractice need to be brought under control. There needs to be a common sense approach to this issue. Should someone age 50 who is earning $40,000 a year be given a $12,000,000 (million dollars) settlement, when they may only have the ability to earn another $700,000 in their life time? Maybe they should be given $2,000,000 and have all associated medical costs taken care of during their life time. If insurance companies had a cap on malpractice they could start dealing with a known factor vs. an unknown factor and that would help reduce rates.
These and other unknown factors are a serious problem.
When you start to add or include additional unknown factors into the health insurance premium equation (such as pre-existing conditions, fraud, unethical claims, malpractice lawsuits) then the health insurance companies must deal with these unknown factors. We cannot continue to have these ongoing core problems persist and think National Health care will solve them.
Remember economics 101. You need to accept the reality that there is only 100 cents in a dollar.
As an analogy…Let’s say you fill your gas tank in Rapid City, knowing you can drive from Rapid City to Sioux Falls on Interstate 90, based on the exact mileage of 329 miles. But let’s say, along the way, you run into a detour and you have to go off the interstate and travel down to Nebraska to get to Sioux Falls, then this unknown factor you had to deal with is going to require you put more gas in your tank to get there. Then you run into a ditch and have to get towed out. So because you had to deal with all these unknown factors that you had no control over, it costs you more money, so the price to get there goes up. This is same problem Insurance Company’s face. Unknown factors (“There is only 100 cents in the dollar.”)
See Part 4 on the National Health Care Bill
See Part 1 on the National Health Care Bill
It seems like business is still getting hit hard. Is anybody seeing an upswing in their respective niches? Health reform seems like a mess. I generate long term care insurance leads and annuity leads for the insurance industry, but volume has been terrible in the last two months. I am afraid the worst is yet to come, but maybe it is just my attitude.
I think it all depends on who you talk to. If you talk to Ben Bernanke you will hear that the hard times are behind us but if you talk to the unemployed father or mother they might not be on the same page. I believe that some areas of business are booming while others can’t seem to make a penny, in fact they are loosing money faster than they can bring it in. We all just need to hang in there and be creative when making our income. we need to try things that we have never tried before by stepping out of the box and out of our comfort zone to stretch ourselves and we might be surprised what a difference it can make on our attitude and our wallet.