With over 10 years experience working in the “health insurance industry,” I would like to address points brought up by a Tuesday letter writer about the “public option.”
Many believe Congress has some sort of super-duper, top-secret, special health insurance plan that only “they” can get. This is not the case. Members of Congress are offered the exact same health insurance options that all federal employees are, the same one my own mother has as a retired federal employee. It is not some special, exclusive benefit plan that Larsen is “keeping to himself,” Every federal employee has access to this plan. If anyone wants this same coverage all they have to do is get a job with the federal government.
The letter mentioned a “cap” on charges and the belief that all providers should be reimbursed the same rates for every patient. It actually is not a “cap” as she envisions it, but a contracted rate, agreed to between the provider and the particular insurance carrier paying the bill. Since every insurance carrier negotiates separately with every provider, there is no one single standard rate for anything. A “cap” as she is suggesting would be creating a single payer system — something everyone screams is not acceptable.
Like the majority of Americans, Larsen’s is an employer-sponsored plan, a benefit of his employment. If Americans want a “true” public option, we need to once and for all sever the connection between employers and their sponsoring of our health insurance. With the millions who have lost their jobs and as a result their health insurance, this should be obvious, but it apparently is not.
In reforming what we have, we need to separate the two to truly make it “portable,” as one of the “P’s” in HIPPA (Health Insurance Privacy &Portability Act) stands for.
Dorenda Wilson
Shoreline
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