Healthy Family's Blog - Health Care Reform

Real Reform . . . Continued

nospam@example.com (Tom Hubbard) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 12:53:58 -0600

To continue with ‘real health care reform’, Incentives are the best thing we can do to begin to change people’s behavior. There was a financial incentive for people to engage in behavior resulting in poor health and there must also be an incentive to change, or it will not happen. Many of us will not change unless we have to so there does need to be government mandated, positive incentives to change. We must reward healthy behavior and lifestyle as well as productivity resulting from proper behavior. On the other hand, those who chose to lead lifestyles that promote the current ‘disease care’ system, must be motivated to change by negative means.

If I must pay health insurance rates to care for the chronically ill who are so because of lifestyle choices, then I want them to pay a whole lot more. While we cannot eliminate interdependency, we can punish those who refuse to participate in the greater good, as though they were tax evaders.

One company has, in the last five years, had zero increase in healthcare costs while the national cost is three times the rate of inflation. They have incentives that include healthy options such as gym memberships, and subsidies for healthy options at the company cafeteria. In addition this same company offers discounts on health insurance for those with low BMI’s and non smokers.

One additional reform whose design is to move government out of the role of elder care is an incentive to pay more for coverage while in our working years. This is in order to have care as we move into an age when we can no longer work. Changing the current tax and spend to a collection and investment system designed to cover costs of healthcare when we are old. To eliminate Medicare and the intrusive and inefficient nature of government by replacing the way money collected for eldercare is used. No longer using the funds from young people to fund a government payor system, we save the money to pay for those who are yet to enter the system, reversing the ‘great society’ of LBJ.

I have a dream too, a nation with much less government control. One nation, of the people, by the people, and for the people. What a concept!

Real Health Care Reform

nospam@example.com (Tom Hubbard) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 15:28:58 -0600

Want to see a different slant on health-care reform? Read on! It seems that the rapid increase in healthcare costs has been paralleled by the expansion of our un-healthy lifestyles. In a word, behavior is one of the largest indicators of healthcare cost. Observe the following statistic.

74 percent of health-care costs are driven by four chronic diseases:
   A. Cardiovascular disease
   B. Cancer
   C. Diabetes
   D. Obesity

What does this tell us about why healthcare costs are moving up? Our lifestyle choices do affect the cost of healthcare. Diet and exercise is after all the primary driver in containing the costs. Perhaps more to the point, our own lack of discipline is killing us. As a society, there must be incentives to live healthy lifestyles. It must start from our president as a national example. He must quit smoking and contributing to the image of an unhealthy lifestyle and start promoting a real and effective solution to the over-utilization of our healthcare system.

Right now our insurance companies are moving us away from the 'nose wipe' plans of the past to plans with much less 'first dollar' coverage. These plans include larger deductibles and coverages only after that deductible is met. In this way we have a personal incentive to keep our costs down, when it hurts us! However, this needs to be taken to a level of positive incentive, much like what happens with HSA's (Health Savings Accounts)
Some large private companies have already begun to incentivize health by offering discounts on the price of insurance for those whose body mass index is below 30%. Also there are discounts for those who have good cholesterol & blood pressure levels and who don't smoke.
It would be my own contention the there must be even more levels of incentives that include most measures of healthy lifestyles including paying slightly higher premiums while we are young healthy and working to pay for future costs when we are old and need the coverage.
This kind of incentive must ever be protected from 'Government' since they have already proven they can squander our future as in Social Security.
For more on this subject, watch for future articles.