Thursday, March 06, 2003

Coverage & Access

Businesses Beginning To Call on Policymakers To Address Issue of Uninsured

      The New York Times on March 6 looks at a shift in the health care debate among employers, who "have long viewed the uninsured as the responsibility of the government" but are now advocating expanding health coverage because growing numbers of uninsured people are increasing costs for their employees' health care. Some companies believe that one reason behind "double-digit" health care cost increases is that doctors and hospitals are raising rates to offset the uncompensated health care costs of treating the nation's 41 million uninsured. A study by the Urban Institute for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said. Bruce Bradley, director of health plan strategy and public policy at General Motors -- which spent $4.5 billion on employee and retiree health care last year -- said, "As a nation, we need to expand coverage for the uninsured and reduce the burden for uncompensated and inefficient care for many payers, whether it's the government or the hospitals or employers." Many employers are planning to participate in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's "Cover the Uninsured Week" to draw attention to the issue, but so far "companies have made few proposals regarding the uninsured," the Times reports (Freudenheim, New York Times, 3/6).

A Web cast of the RWJF briefing to launch the Cover the Uninsured Week is available online at kaisernetwork.org.

Debating the Issue
USA Today on March 6 published a point-counterpoint opinion piece on the issue rising health care costs. The following summarizes the two positions:

• The "best measure of the depth of the nation's health care troubles" is a recent survey of personal worries that shows the fear of rising health care costs "far outstrips the fear" of war with Iraq, terrorist attacks, losing a job or suffering stock market losses, according to a USA Today editorial. The Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that nearly 40% of people in the United States are "very worried" that their medical bills would increase and that "anxiety is fed by the current explosion in health care costs," the editorial says. While President Bush "attempted to address this cost crisis" on Tuesday by unveiling his plan to expand prescription drug coverage for seniors on Medicare, his plan "would tackle just one slice of the cost problem," USA Today writes. Lawmakers could take several "modest actions" to reduce costs in the short term, including lowering drug costs, "more aggressively" overseeing hospital mergers that result in "sharply higher costs," providing affordable insurance by allowing small firms to join together to offer coverage and helping consumers cut costs by allowing unspent flexible spending account funds to roll into the following year's account, the editorial says. USA Today concludes, "None of these cost-saving ideas alone will solve the nation's health care problems," but "[s]mall repairs today can pave a path for bigger solutions tomorrow" (USA Today, 3/6).
  
• In a counterpoint to the USA Today editorial, Don McCanne, president of Physicians for a National Health Program, writes that the "continuing rise in health care costs is proof that our existing system of competing health plans has been incapable of controlling costs." According to McCanne, "Decades of attempts to improve coverage through a hodgepodge of private plans and public programs have resulted only in higher costs and greater numbers of uninsured." A single-payer national health insurance system, by comparison, would "slow the growth of health care costs well into the future" and "ensure that everyone has access to comprehensive health care services," McCanne writes. McCanne concludes that a single-payer system would provide "high-quality, comprehensive, affordable health care for everyone" but can only be achieved if "we throw out the wasteful, ineffective middlemen -- the health plans -- and spend the money on patients instead" (McCanne, USA Today, 3/6).