As a small business owner, and founder of myhealthandmoney.com, I was curious how Senator Durbin would explain the benefits of the Senate healthcare reform bill, and the likelihood that a bill will make it to the President’s office.  He kicked off his speech saying that healthcare is a very personal matter, which is why it’s so complex, contentious and difficult to solve.  It affects all of us in very profound ways – sick or well; managing our own care or the care of others; insured or uninsured.

Senator Durbin highlighted the consumer protection elements in the bill:

• Expanding Medicaid with federal funds underwriting the cost to help insure 30mm Americans have access to healthcare coverage
• Providing health insurance subsidies to individuals up to 144% of the poverty level ($88,000/year)
• Assurances that should you or someone in your family have a pre-existing condition you can find affordable private health insurance
• Mandatory preventive services and childhood immunizations
• Ban on life-time caps in health insurance plans so consumers aren’t at risk of bankruptcies from medical expenses, and
• Coverage of children up to 26 years of age under a parent’s policy

Senator Durbin believes that disabling the anti-trust law that protects insurance companies from penalties for price setting and managing competition is a hallmark of the bill.  This is the only industry exempt from anti-trust rules.  One has to wonder, How did this happen?  One also has to ask those against healthcare reform why they think the market will take care of our rising costs and lack of access to care when insurance companies are protected from behaving like a true market-driven industry.  After all, they have stock prices to manage.

There are several components of healthcare reform that I like, including funding pilot projects to test our way into how to deliver care more efficiently and have better patient outcomes.  The crystal balls we’ve used in the past haven’t produced the results we’re looking for so it’s time to test, prove and optimize our way into restructuring healthcare instead of wholesale change.

The one aspect of the bill I’m skeptical about is how all of this will add up to lower insurance premiums.  Senator Durbin said the bill calls for 85% of our premiums to be used for actual health services, which starts to get at the issue of high profits and administrative overhead.  But without a watchdog group in place, how can we be assured that the insurance companies won’t increase our premiums in order to be guaranteed that their 15% cut is big enough to keep their over-sized engines running?  One option is to get the federal employee insurance exchange model in place sooner than planned and let insurance companies duke it out – real competition for the first time.

Regardless of what I like and don’t like, I support healthcare reform.  There is no way to get all that we need and want into one effort.  So I’m satisfied that this is a start, and I’m glad we’re closer than we have been for several presidents to doing something about the high cost of healthcare.  As Senator Durbin says, Healthcare is a complex, contentious and long road to solve.

• Previous Entry: Free Basic Membership – Start Saving On Healthcare Now
• Next Entry: Waiting for Healthcare Reform