State Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) conducted a five hour long hearing Monday on Senate Bill 562, the Healthy Wisconsin AUTHORITY and Plan. For someone who has 25 years of experience helping people finance high-quality (but expensive) health care, I was struck by the theater of the proceedings and paucity of substance.
As just one example, I heard numerous individuals testify as to the "obvious" advantages of spreading risk over a larger pool to achieve lower costs. Over and over we heard about state employees having the best benefits anywhere and lower costs because of the buying power of this large group (260,000 statewide; 70,000 in Dane County alone).
Trouble is, that's not true. Where was testimony by the insurers (who cover both state employees and those of small business) that would reveal a significant disparity of costs on a per member per month (apples to apples) basis.
Let's also hear the testimony of impartial actuaries who would more accurately describe the utter predictability of morbity in any group over a thousand or so lives.
I can only conclude there is a reason such experts are not called to testify. It has to be the same reason this bill was reintroduced in the final week of the legislative session to be voted on, I'm sure, without further study and debate. The reason: politics.
Serious people in the private sector are hard at work trying to lower health care costs through hundreds of small steps that take time to bear fruit and can't be wrapped up into one neat reform sales pitch.
Their efforts are mocked as unverifiable and too little too late.
The real mockery should be reserved for those who think such a complex problem can be fixed in one piece of legislation. And for the utter deception of their sales pitch, they deserve the political results they nurture.
Jon Rauser is president of The Rauser Agency Inc., Milwaukee.
2 Comments
Jon,
I agree with your thoughts and continue to wonder why we still see these same ideas brought back in slightly different form time and again.
All this while I continue to see the results of other states' and countries' efforts at managing health care for their citizens. Many governors and state legislatures are trying to find the cure for high health care prices, and, unfortunately, seem to dismiss or completely ignore the fact that consumerism in the acquisition of health care will go far down the road in the right direction.
The weak argument over health savings accounts simply being a way for employers to offload their responsibilities on employees is simply off the mark. Employers, at least for the moment, may or may not offer health care coverage. They do it to be good employers so that they can attract and retain good employees. The idea that all employers are going to be forced to offer healthcare coverage will do nothing more than help many small employers go out of business faster than they might've in this state that does them no favors to begin with. That, of course, will increase the number of uninsured but too many of our political gurus seem incapable of understanding this cause and effect 'thing'.
The Lewin Group is suspect from my perspective since each of their efforts looks much the same as the last with a few words changed to make their proposal more easily shoved down the throats of the Wisconsin taxpayers...to their collective detriment. This group has used the same suggested approach in other states and,so far,there have been no great victories over the health care boogyman.
How is it that the new Wisconsin Health Authority will be any different, other than purely in form, than the governing board in the first iteration of 'Healthy Wisconsin'? It is a quasi governmental agency charged with the impossible job of making too few dollars go further in the currently misaligned health care environment. Let us make the changes necessary in the transparency of the system, both from a cost and quality perspective,and the rest will follow.
Right on Jon and Alan! One large area of fiscal concern with in the health care industry is fraud. We're told millions of our health care dollars are being lost to con artists and such. I believe we need to look into the fraud aspect of our health care system and clean it up. What do you think?