The End of Health Insurance Companies
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/30/the-end-of-health-insurance-companies/
I had never heard of the “Accountable Care Organization” before reading this article, but it appears on the surface to be a really good direction for us to go toward. Having said that, somehow I got the feeling that the for-profit element is still going to torpedo the effort. It is a great idea, though: give the group a fixed amount of money per enroll-ee and let them manage themselves to minimize long-term costs. That, alone, would encourage the more efficient use of resources as right now the system is paid on a per-use basis, so has a negative incentive to keep people healthy. As long as it were trivial for people to move between organizations (which will never be the case as long as employers are the gatekeepers, man that was a stupid idea!) there will be pressure for the organizations to provide better service for a lower cost. However, in our screwed-up employer-paid debacle we have now almost guarantees failure from my point of view. If people had to pay for their own health care directly (like their car insurance) then there would be a lot more potential for competition, but not the way things stand now. I am not sure that there is any chance of getting employers to stop the current paradigm absent any government action and with today’s political situation I don’t think government action is possible since the health insurance industry would strongly campaign against it.
