So the battle begins in earnest.  Traditional solutions to the health insurance crisis will not work.  We need bold innovation that recognizes the need for market solutions (such as Medicare Advantage) but also is willing to reign in monopolistic tactics by health insurers.  A good place for all in the new administration to start would be to review the 14  point plan outlined here in Real Health Reform. These steps each address a major obstacle to sustainable, achievable health insurance reform . . . obi jo

Excerpted from AMA Morning Rounds . . .

USA Today  editorializes that President-elect Barack Obama wants “to provide a government-run” healthcare plan “modeled after Medicare, as a choice for people who don’t get insurance through their employers,” which “would compete with commercial insurers to provide better service and benefits.” Critics of his plan, however, contend that private insurers would be at a disadvantage “because, unlike the government,” they “have to earn a profit.” Critics also claim that Obama’s plan “could lead to an unraveling of employer-provided plans.” But, according to USA Today, “many conservatives are trying to do just that, by ending the tax deduction enjoyed by employer-based plans.” Although critics also fear that the government plan “would lead to a single-payer healthcare system,” already, an estimated “10 million people have opted out of traditional Medicare to take private coverage through” Medicare Advantage. USA Today concludes, “if commercial coverage becomes unaffordable to all but the few, the future of private insurance will be the least of everyone’s concerns.”

. . . read more @ http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/01/give-consumers.html

Expert argues millions would lose coverage with Obama’s national health-insurance exchange.  Robert Moffit, director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation, writes that “millions would lose their existing coverage” under President-elect Barack Obama’s healthcare-reform proposal. He argues that the “reality” of Obama’s “national health-insurance exchange, in which the government competes with private insurance,” is that “the presence of a large national plan would…encourage employers to drop coverage.” In fact, an analysis by the Lewin Group revealed that “21.6 million would lose their private coverage” under Obama’s plan. In addition, data indicated that “18.6 million employees would find themselves in the new government plan, as employers switched from private health insurance.” Moffit concludes that, as a result, the nation would “wind up with a highly regulated and painfully sluggish, centrally controlled system.”

. . . read more @ http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2009/01/dont-crowd-out.html