An Idea That Makes Sense

[dtotire]

The Insurance Industry's Lethal Bottom Line -- and a Solution From Sens. Franken and Rockefeller

Wendell Potter

CMD's Senior Fellow on Health Care
Posted: December 6, 2009 07:33 PM



<snip>
Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) is now leading a group including Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) to introduce an amendment that would go further by requiring that 90 percent of the money consumers spend on health insurance premiums go directly to health care cost.
<snip>


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendell-potter/the-insurance-industrys-l_b_382001.html



If this is made a requirement, there wouldn't be a need for a public option.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/wendell-potter/the-insurance-industrys-l_b_382001.html

[elehhhhna]

1. wow k&r so simple!

[dtotire]

2. Another Solution

From the website:


There was a time, in the early 1990s, when health insurance companies devoted more than 95
cents out of every premium dollar to paying doctors and hospitals for taking care of their members. No more. Since President Bill Clinton's health reform plan died 15 years ago, the health insurance industry has come to be dominated by a handful of insurance companies that answer to Wall Street investors, and they have changed that basic math. Today, insurers only pay about 81 cents of each premium dollar on actual medical care. The rest is consumed by rising profits, grotesque executive salaries, huge administrative expenses, the cost of weeding out people with pre-existing conditions and claims review designed to wear out patients with denials and disapprovals of the care they need the most.

<Snip>




If passed, in the future the requirement could be increased until the insurers become nonprofit, essentially, as they are in other countries, such as Switzerland, Austria, and a few others.

[valerief]

3. Who would do the auditing? The same folks who count our votes? nt

[Edweird]

4. It's a good start, but it doesn't address overvalued medical care.

Big pharma needs to be reigned in as well.