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. |