Urgent Care by Minda Wilson: Minda WIlsons Response to Republican Proposals

President Trump said that healthcare is complicated. It is complicated;

but fixing healthcare is not.

The solution is simple and comes in 3 parts:

1) True health insurance coverage, by a licensed entity, ie insurance company, gifting program, MEWA, or other legally approved entity, will provide catastrophic coverage, only. This means that preventative care will not be covered. Those costs should be paid individually by money set aside in your Health Savings Account, see below.

2) In the aggregate, the price an insurance company charges for its policies should be no more than 1.4 times the money paid out by that insurance company for medical related services.

3) All Americans should be able to set up Health Savings Accounts for themselves and their family members. Contributions can be made by both employers, employees, and individuals. Caps for these accounts should be set no lower than the cost of a family deductible, today about $10,000.

This proposal ties policy prices to money actually paid out for care. If they spend more on care for your fellow policy holders your policy price will go up. If they spend less, your policy price will go down. The money they get for administration will be directly tied to the cost of care. They less they spend on care the less they receive for administration. It is just that simple. You will be responsible for your individual healthcare needs. If you don't take care of yourself, you will pay more.

Fixing healthcare only becomes complicated when you stop thinking about what a viable solution would look like and start thinking about how you can satisfy the insurance companies needs to continue using funds that are supposed to be used to pay for customer's healthcare needs, but instead are used to pay for health insurance company expenses.

The legislative proposals call for more health "insurance". Allowing insurance companies accesses to more insureds and relying on them to agree to reduce costs makes no sense. As a business person, if someone said, "I'll send more customers your way and let you decide whether or not your think the extra business is enough to make you consider lowering your prices!" , the odds of me lowering those prices is slim and none.

Affordability seems to be off the table. Policy costs will continue to be negotiated at the state level. Since all insurance companies typically have to do to raise rates is show more losses than anticipated or more expenses than anticipated, the odds of rates going down any time soon are non-existent. Interstate insurance will allow companies incorporated in the most advantageous states to out compete those who are incorporated in states with higher levels of consumer protections. While tax subsidies and/or tax credits are being considered, lower income families, and families that do not file itemized returns will receive little or no benefits.

Americans seem to have confused health insurance with health care. Health insurance is supposed to spread the risk so that everyone who participates pays a little so that no one person has to pay a lot if they get sick. Health insurance companies have become an investment vehicle to enrich senior executives. As long as we continue to allow them to spend only 10% of what comes in to pay for the actual care part of their policy holders , there won't be much care there.

"The answer to our problem is to hold our insurers accountable; not promise them more business with no consideration for how much we will be charged"

Minda Wilson

Author of Urgent Care