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Improvements to Basic Health Insurance

posted on:  9/13/2006     revised: 3/9/2010

 

Just announced changes to "Basic Health Insurance" will likely rock the health insurance within the next month or so and really bring to light some of the real issues facing the 40 million uninsured Americans.

Basic Health Insurance is a policy available to just about anyone, available in most states, that provides a limited defined benefit for a premium that even a minimum wage earner can afford. The policy can be offered through an employer, employer-paid or salary deducted, or as an individual coverage.

Further enhancements announced today (to become available at an unspecified date in the future) include:

  • higher maximum benefit levels

  • next day coverage

  • real time online enrollment with immediate secure payment

  • Online group quoting and enrollment for employer-sponsored plans (only the individual plans offer online enrollment now).

This specific type of health insurance clearly has the potential to solve a large portion of the nation's uninsured population. This policy will, in my opinion, be the single best result of our collective efforts to address the problem of Americans without health insurance. But my guess is that while the new Basic Health Insurance will be commercially successful, the number of uninsureds in our nation will remain unaffected. The fact is that even if we (as a public policy) gave away the coverage for free, there would still be a huge amount of people uninsured.

We will see that the biggest problem is not affordability, as most have suggested in the past. Thee are a host of other issues clouding the nation's uninsured problem that are at least as difficult, perhaps more difficult, than the affordability problem.

Editorial note: Since 2007 when this article was first published and commercial low cost health basic health insurance plans have become more abundant, it has become increasingly clear from a wide range of sources that the availability of affordable insurance does not significantly impact the number of people without health insurance.

 

keywords:   low cost health insurance, uninsured, affordable

 

related topics: www.basichealthinsurance.net

 

 

 

 

Copyright 2010 by Tony Novak. Originally produced and published for the "AskTony" column syndication prior to 2007. Edited and independently republished by the author in March 2010. All rights reserved.