Secret weapon: the "new" Medicare as a route to health security

Over the past twenty years, Medicare has been transformed from a single-payer insurer into a hybrid of complementary public and private insurance arrangements. Despite creating ongoing controversy, these changes have resulted in an ironic and largely overlooked strategic potential: Medicare's evolving hybrid form makes it the most promising vehicle for overcoming the historical obstacles to universal health insurance in the United States. To make this surprising case, we first explore the distinctive political dynamics of programs that, like today's Medicare, are hybrids of public and private arrangements. We then consider how these political dynamics might circumvent past barriers to universal health insurance. Finally, we discuss the strengths and weaknesses of alternative pathways through which Medicare could be expanded to promote health security.

The health system: what should our priorities be?

ISSUE ADDRESSED

The way the health system is organised is a critically important social determinant of health. Australia's current health system funding arrangements contain serious barriers to effective health promotion and chronic disease management. The consequences are most evident among disadvantaged people. Major health system reform is needed in Australia to rectify this problem.

METHODS

This paper describes current mechanisms for funding health care in Australia and examines a recent reform experiment, the Co-ordinated Care Trials. It discusses why the trials were unsuccessful and identifies key criteria for future success. Three existing proposals for health system reform are assessed against these criteria - managed competition, a Commonwealth takeover of health and medical saving accounts.

RESULTS

Successful reform of Australia's health system will need to ensure that more flexible services are delivered, changes are made on a large scale to affect demand and strong incentives to use cost-effective services are put in place. Of the models considered, managed competition best meets these criteria and is most likely to reduce health disparities and improve health promotion and disease prevention. A Commonwealth takeover of health funding is a less ambitious alternative but because of this, it is also likely to have less impact. It is doubtful whether medical savings accounts meet any of the criteria for success and they would also require a fundamental change in the values that underpin the Austrlian health system.

CONCLUSION

Recent reforms of Australia's health system have been too small and have had little impact. Although radical reform of the health system is politically unpalatable and extremely rare, it may be the only way Australia will be able to meet the health challenges of the 21st Century.

Single-payer, health savings accounts, or managed care? Minnesota physicians' perspectives

The United States is facing a health care crisis with the number of uninsured Americans exceeding 46 million and health care premiums and overall costs increasing at 3 to 4 times the rate of inflation. Proposed solutions include continuing managed care, moving to a single-payer financing system with universal coverage, and replacing traditional health plans with high-deductible policies that allow patients to draw from health savings accounts (HSAs) to pay out-of-pocket costs. Despite physicians' vital role in health care, few studies have assessed their preferences regarding health care financing systems. We surveyed a random sample of licensed Minnesota physicians to determine their preferences regarding health care financing systems. Of 390 physicians, 64% favored a single-payer system, 25% HSAs, and 12% managed care. The majority of physicians (86%) also agreed that it is the responsibility of society, through the government, to ensure that everyone has access to good medical care. Less than half (41%) said that the private insurance industry should continue to play a major role in financing health care. The accumulating knowledge about physicians' preferences for various health care financing mechanisms merits widespread inclusion in policy debates.

Health care industry trends: converting data to competitive advantage

Learn the latest health care industry trends, and, more importantly, how you can use them to get ahead in the marketplace.

Data and dollars: how CDHC is driving the convergence of banking and health care

The new world of consumer-directed health care is arriving faster than many thought possible, and new trends are taking shape: Consumers in large numbers are adopting health savings accounts paired with high-deductible insurance policies. Banks, credit unions, and even insurance companies are offering HSAs and making them increasingly attractive by letting holders invest their unused deposits in mutual funds. Employers-including giants such as Wal-Mart--are pushing their employees in large numbers into these consumer-directed plans.

Building a culture of personal benefits responsibility

Successfully having employees take personal responsibility for their benefits plans requires going beyond the rapid rollout of new benefit plan designs; it requires employers to invest in understanding the complexity of their workforce. This article reviews the evolution of benefit plans and what has arisen as the current state of employee benefits. It then discusses steps employers can take to build a successful total benefit strategy that recognizes the importance of the emerging workforce's racial, ethnic and cultural diversity.

Can big business save health care?

Corporate America has decided to stop bellyaching about the cost and quality of the health care it helps buy for its employees. Now it's taking concrete action. Large employers such as Wal-Mart, Oracle, Cisco, BP America and many, many others are pressuring providers to meet performance standards, adopt information technology and transform the efficiency of their operations. Big Business wants value for its buck, and it's now putting money where its mouth is.

Behind the slow enrollment growth of employer-based consumer-directed health plans

Despite the buzz about empowering consumers and controlling rising health costs, consumer-directed health plans (CDHPs)--defined as high-deductible plans coupled with savings accounts--have barely gained a toehold among Americans with employer-sponsored insurance, according to a new national study by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). CDHP proponents often assert the plans offer employees greater choice and autonomy in the health care marketplace, but 39 percent of the estimated 2.7 million workers enrolled in employer-sponsored CDHPs had no choice of another type of health plan in 2006. Moreover, among workers with a choice of plans, relatively few (19%) choose CDHPs when offered another type of plan option, such as preferred provider organizations (PPOs) or health maintenance organizations (HMO). Comparable take-up rates for PPO and HMO plans when employees have a choice of another plan type were 55 percent and 40 percent, respectively.

Employer-sponsored, personal, and portable health insurance

Personal and portable health insurance is an idea whose time has come. Despite its stated intent, however, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) strongly discourages individually owned, portable insurance. Federal tax laws do the same. Some examples of portable benefits exist, such as the TIAA-CREF system. This paper considers three reform models for moving toward personal, portable coverage: the National Center for Policy Analysis-Texas Blue Cross Blue Shield proposal, the Massachusetts health care plan, and a health reimbursement arrangement (HRA) approach. Congress could make the transition smoother by clarifying when and if individually owned insurance can be purchased with pretax dollars.