Now that’s refreshing - a managed care exec who has taken to the road to help move reform along rather than cling to the status quo. Only problem is that in order to do so he’d like to remove some of the mandated benefits that are part-and-parcel of selling these insurance products in many states. I don’t think that’s the answer.
If you read his words carefully you will see that it comes down to simply not wanting to pay for those mandated services. That is, his argument hinges on the point that healthcare is expensive because of all these mandated benefits, and that if these were removed then they could offer cheaper plans. By way of example he says “As an individual, why would I want to pay for coverage for Gaucher’s disease?” Well, it’s not benefits that make a policy expensive, it’s utilization of those benefits that cost an insurer. If Gaucher’s disease is so rare as to merit exclusion then where is the cost component to the insurer for including it?
See Aetna Chief Urges Health Care Reform for the whole story
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Insurer as catalyst for productive change? « Verd-e-Blog // January 5, 2008 at 3:35 am
[...] Aetna’s chief running around talking about reform, and United Healthcare committing to improve service, it would seem so. Now Carefirst, one of the [...]
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