Heath Reform. What exactly do we need to reform?

The current debate about the need to reform heath care in America is bouncing back and forth between criticism of our provider services and costs, to the high expense of obtaining and maintaining health insurance. These are two distinctly different areas of concern and the debate needs to be separated to discuss only one at a time.

If the concern is for the quality or level of care available, then the questions need to focus on the doctors, the hospitals, drug companies, and the ancillary providers.   If the concern is that there are too many who cannot afford health insurance, then the discussion needs to shift to an evaluation of our current health insurance system and consider how or why the government thinks it can improve what we currenlty have.

Finally, if the problem is the high cost of the services, whether insured or not, then we need to understand what drives the pricing of our health delivery system and determine how or if we think we can reduce that costs and still maintain the level of care we have come to expect.

In the coming posts I will take each of these issues and break them down in ways that should help you better understand details about each you rarely get provided in typcial news programs.  As an insurance professional, I may seem biased toward the position of private insurance companies, but if you stay with me, you will see that I share many of your frustrations of the oft impersonal approach of these industry giants.  But I won't just join a lynch mob to string up something and remove it, unless I personally understand what is wrong with it, and agree that there is not a way to improve it or modify it so that it will work better.

I am open minded and want to see how this discussion goes.  Join me with your own comments and lets get this discussion about health reform going.