As Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and governmental leaders start haggling over how to broaden admission to health insurance coverage for millions of Californians who lack it today, they will mostly be talking about tweaking the existing system. Though their plans have major differences, the governor and his legislative counterparts all want to protect and expand the employer-based system as we know it, mostly by forcing more companies to buy private insurance coverage on behalf of their workers.
If you think the current system works pretty well, then you possibly think this is the right approach. A few subsidies here, permission there, a new tax or two and we're done. After all, more than 80 percent of Californians have health insurance of one type or another already.
The reason more employers don't already give care is that they can't afford it. The reason many individuals turn down the health insurance that employers do suggest is that they don't think they can afford it, which is another way of saying they think they should spend their money on something else, perhaps a necessary item such as food, clothing or shelter.
Healthcare improvement is in the air. Ideas for trade with the 46 million Americans without medical insurance appear to be popping up faster than new cases of the winter flu. President Bush proposes to utilize tax deductions to help people buy individual plans. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to make it compulsory for everyone in his state to obtain insurance and would force employers who don't give coverage to pay into a fund. Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards would lift taxes on the affluent to pay for subsidies to help those with low incomes obtain policies. Some members of Congress are to promote insurance purchasing pools for small businesses.
An odd bedfellow's coalition including the Business Roundtable, AARP, the Service Employees International Union and Wal-Mart is approaching for some kind of expansion of coverage but is not saying what structure it should take. What these speckled plans have in common is the assumption that, at least for the predictable future, most of the working population will persist to receive coverage through private insurance carriers. Public officials across the political spectrum are, in effect, seeking to enlarge the customer base for a highly profitable industry.
India's biggest hospital chains Apollo Hospitals Group has drawn up a hit-list of British takeover targets, together with Priory's Healthcare and Capio UK. Quoting people with knowledge of Apollo's plans, the media here to report that the Indian company has already uttered an interest in the operating arm of Capio UK, one of Britain's biggest hospital operators, which includes the Nightingale Hospital here.
Pete Doherty, the Babyshambles singer, was treated at the Nightingale Hospital for drug habit. Britain is understood to have become chiefly attractive to Apollo's Founder and Chairman Dr Prathap Reddy, following a surge of transactions that have seen Britain's private healthcare industry quickly consolidate into private- equity-backed portfolios.
Richard Badger has read regarding Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ambitious new plan to give health-care coverage for all Californians, and he isn't buying it. "I'm not for it," said Badger, a Kaiser Permanente member through his employer, Washington Mutual. "It's going to make it like in other countries where it takes five months to see a doctor. The more people you put in to the system, the longer everything will take." The governor's personnel say his health-care plan is not a "single payer system," meaning a centralized, government-run scheme for paying doctors and hospitals. But it does hold elements of that model. The proposals require each individual to carry health insurance. It calls for health plans and HMOs to use at least 85 percent on patient care. And it calls for the formation of a new state-managed insurance purchasing pool, to be paid into by doctors, hospitals and employers who choose not to present a health-care plan to workers. The pool would be used to help wrap insurance for low-income and uninsured people. As they consider how many billions if any to allocate to health-insurance programs for working-class kids, activist Susan Molina wants members of Congress to know accurately what is at stake: Children like hers. When her husband left her, she had a small number of skills, no high school diploma and two young children. She got a job cleaning apartments, took classes to get her high school diploma and enroll her children, Joseph, now 10, and Bernadette, now 14, in the state's Child Health Plan Plus. The Colorado account of the state and federal health-insurance partnership saw her kids through sprained ankles and infections, until her augmented income meant she was no longer eligible.
The legislation that created CHP+ and its complement programs across the nation are set to expire at the end of this fiscal year. This week, Molina's dual roles as supporter and mom take her to Washington to ask Congress to not only continue the program but enlarge it so more children, including hers, can get health care. Molina, who chairs Denver, based Metro Organizations for People, and other child advocates are excited to expand the federal program, SCHIP, to cover more of the nation's estimated 9 million children without health insurance. When it comes to preparing for retirement, there are few guarantees any longer. Just ask new retirees of Hanesbrands Inc. under the age of 65.On Feb. 1, Hanesbrands cut its payment to retirees' health-insurance premiums from an average of 62 percent to no more than 35 percent. It will end its contributions completely Dec. 1 but will persist to provide access to the group rate for retirees who can pay the full cost of the premium.
Some pre-65 retirees told the Winston-Salem Journal that they have left from paying $60 to $130 a month to more than $450. When the subsidy ends, they said, their premiums will increase to more than $750 a month. For a retiree carrying a spouse on his or her strategy, the cost could top $1,200 a month. To many employees, group health care benefits can be a very perplexing subject. There are many different employer-sponsored health insurance plans and carriers accessible in the Bradenton-Sarasota area. Three major carriers are obtainable to groups that fall in the small market category of two to 50 employees. They are Aetna, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida and United HealthCare. All three offer a wide range of benefit plans. Normally, choosing benefit plans is done after an agent representative has had discussions with the executive staff at each company.
While many companies prefer to offer one plan to employees based on a company's size, they may be able to elect what is known as a dual or triple option. This allows the company to offer more than one selection to their employees. Typically, we see this when a company is to elect a high deductible health plan that can attach to a Health Savings Account, along with a more traditional HMO or PPO style copay plan. These different styles allow for employees to appear at their individual situations and come to a conclusion on which benefit plan design is a fit for them.
The budget President Bush proposed Monday calls for the cordial Medicare cuts of his six years in office and falls short in expanding health coverage to uninsured children. The top priority for congressional Democrats this year. Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt recognized the budget's austere tone but said action was needed to rein in programs growing at an unsustainable pace.
"A very clear priority of the budget has been to reach balance in 2012," he told reporters Monday, "and that has forced many of the hard decisions." Consumer and industry groups as well as AARP, the American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society, the Alzheimer's Association and the California Hospital Association and roundly criticized Bush's plan, and their opposition signaled that it is unlikely to gain traction. |
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