Making Coverage More Affordable?

In the drive to lower health care premiums, many are looking at insurance plans that offer fewer benefits at a reduced cost. But are plans like this really part of the solution to escalating health care costs? The Salt Lake City Tribune examines this issue as it reports on the work of the Utah Legislature's Health System Reform Task Force. According to the Tribune:

Utah lawmakers want to allow your employer to put pre-tax cash in your pocket and let you shop for your own health insurance plan.

Rather than pay a portion of your premium each month, your employer would make a deposit into your health savings account - money you could use to buy any plan you want.

By the time that would happen next year, lawmakers hope to have in place an Internet portal - a kind of Travelocity.com for health insurance - to help Utahns compare insurers' rates, coverage and histories of honoring claims.

With just one meeting left before the Legislature's Health System Reform Task Force disbands, lawmakers unveiled a five-page blueprint for a slew of bills to be drafted and debated this session.

The thrust of it gives Utahns more options to buy coverage - including the chance to get plans that are mostly free of benefits now mandated by the state and therefore are less expensive. Lawmakers, in turn, hope the private insurance market will capture a greater number of the state's 287,000 uninsured…

While the task force is focused on tearing down barriers to affordable health insurance, Rep. David Litvack, D-Salt Lake City, wondered if some of the proposals sacrifice comprehensive coverage for the sake of lower premiums.

NetCare, for instance, is a proposed insurance plan that would be free of most state-mandated benefits. It would be offered at a third of the price of the average large-group premium, but would not cover many conditions - which have not yet been specified.

"If something like mental health parity is not included," Litvack said, "where does someone go?"
Rep. David Clark, R-Santa Clara, said helping get more Utahns insured is a delicate balancing act between affordability and coverage. "Rather than us try to determine where that exact fine point is, let individuals in the market figure that out," he said.