Over the past few months, a politically-diverse group of health policy experts has been pondering a key question: what are the “specific, feasible steps” that policymakers could use to reduce the growth of health spending? In short, how can we bend the curve?
The fruits of their labor were published by the Brookings Institution on Tuesday as Bending the Curve: Effective Steps to Reduce Long-Term Health Care Spending Growth.
I encourage everyone interested in health policy to give it a close look.
The report’s recommendations for fixing health insurance particularly caught my eye:
Governments should ensure proper incentives for non-group and small-group health insurance markets to focus on competition based on cost and quality rather than selection. Achieving this requires near-universal coverage and insurance exchanges to pool risk outside of employment, augment choice, and align premium differences with differences in plan costs.
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[Therefore, these insurance markets should be restructured to] focus insurer competition on cost and quality through requirements for guaranteed issue without — or with very limited — pre-existing condition exclusions; limited health rating, such as those related to age and behaviors only; and full risk-adjustment of premiums across insurers based on enrollees’ risk. For market stability, these reforms must be undertaken in the context of an enforced mandate that individuals maintain continuous, creditable basic coverage.
In short, the report recommends a combination of an individual mandate and reforms that eliminate both the ability of and the incentive for insurance companies to try to enroll only the healthy and low-cost.
Continue reading “Bending the Curve: Redefining Health Insurance”
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