This was refreshing – a letter in today’s Denver Post from Jandel T. Allen-Davis, M.D., Denver, vice president of government and external relations for Kaiser Permanente Colorado. It concerns Colorado legislation, rather than national, but that is beside the point.
Not all health insurance companies are opposed to House Bill 1355 [which passed the Colorado legislature in 2007], which prohibits rate hikes for businesses that have sicker employees. Kaiser Permanente Colorado supported that bill and many previous legislative attempts to encourage greater access to insurance. We believe that the rules of the game must change so that insurance carriers are encouraged to expand the pool of insured and take on their fair share of risk.
More importantly, the debate over HB 1355 is all about how we shift premium costs around and not at all about how we keep premium costs down. Americans spend more money on health care than any other country, yet the country is No. 37 in quality of care. We should be talking about how to get our money’s worth.
We should be talking about effective treatments, coordinated care, and electronic medical records — the kind of health care delivery innovations that enable Kaiser Permanente to keep rates 20 percent lower for small businesses, compared to other insurers.
I encourage readers to become familiar with Kaiser Permanente’s health reform proposals, detailed at http://www.kaiserpermanente.org/reform. Unless we address the fundamental delivery inefficiencies in our system, America’s health care spending will continue to skyrocket.
Kaiser Permanente is a non-profit health insurance provider. The part in bold I emphasized above is a plea to for-profit insurance companies to change the rules, take a little more risk. Kaiser has no choice but to play by for-profit rules when for-profits dominate the marketplace. Otherwise, they end of with for-profit rejects, and go under.
For-profit health insurance companies exist for the sole purpose of skimming money off the health care system, and therefore do everything in their power to maximize profits by minimizing payouts for medical losses. Kaiser is, oddly, different. Why?
Anyway, nice to hear a reaosnable voice from inside the business.
Piece of Mindful 