Balanced Choice
A Common Sense Cure for the U.S. Health Care Systems
by
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Chapter 1
Balanced Choice: A Health Care Security System
The United States has nearly 46 million uninsured people. Many more people are underinsured, and still more fear the loss of their health insurance.[i] The problem does not come from not spending enough money. The United States spends 47% more per capita on health care than does the next highest spending country, Switzerland, which, as almost every industrialized country, has universal coverage.[ii] Measures of quality of care indicate that the United States ranks behind many industrialized countries—even those that spend less than 57% as much per capita as the United States.[iii] Providers are dissatisfied with the enormous health care bureaucracy. The difficulties and restrictions of administratively complex insurance companies frustrate consumers. Employers can no longer afford the financial burden of health care and are cutting back on coverage. It is time for the United States to fix its health care systems.
Balanced Choice Health Care is a comprehensive plan that organizes health care delivery and the financing of universal coverage for an entire country—in this case, the United States. The result is a system that is good for the three important stakeholders—consumers, providers, and employers. For consumers, Balanced Choice is a system that is easy to use, allows choice, and gives the security of universal coverage. For providers, it allows choice about the degree of participation and, unlike a traditional single payer system, Balanced Choice does not impose government price controls. For employers, it reduces their portion of health care cost, and it ends their responsibility for providing health care coverage. Overall, Balanced Choice costs less than the current health care system.
Balanced Choice is innovative because it breaks through a fundamental impasse in health care reform. Reformers have been locked into two opposing camps, each with its own perspective. Each touts its advantages, but each also has essential weaknesses that prevent the development of adequate solutions to problems in the United States health care systems. Balanced Choice takes principles from each camp and combines them in a new way of organizing health care.
In one camp, proponents of single payer systems offer reforms that provide universal coverage. These proposals cost less than the current health care systems because they achieve tremendous cost savings by reducing administrative expenses. Single payer systems, however, involve government price controls that are unacceptable to the provider community. Moreover, both consumers and providers fear the loss of control over treatment decisions and the potential waiting lists that might occur. As a result, single payer systems, while preferred by many, lack the ability to overcome the political obstacles necessary for reform.
The other camp believes that improved coverage should come from a government sponsored expansion of insurance policies. This camp promotes the benefits of competition and the idea that government is smaller when health care is managed by insurance. Unfortunately, the proposals to expand insurance have several drawbacks. Expanding the number of people covered by insurance increases costs. Competition among insurance plans does not work well because consumers cannot predict their future health care needs or switch plans freely. Often, even with subsidies, consumers are unable to afford the insurance plan they need. Expanded insurance coverage would still have many gaps in coverage and leave people uninsured. When insurance companies manage health care, the result is bureaucratic restrictions on providers and consumers that are as onerous or worse than big government. Efforts to expand insurance coverage are stymied because these reforms increase costs and complexity, while still not providing universal coverage.
Balanced Choice offers the advantages desired by both camps. It balances two Plans—one Plan offers benefits very similar to a single payer system and the other Plan, based on market principles, offers more choices of providers. When balanced together, they provide a comprehensive, universal coverage health care security system in which both consumers and providers have freedom of choice. The entire s
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About the Book
Can the ailing health care system be cured? Yes, but only with new ideas. Health care reform is stuck because there has not been an acceptable reform proposal. Providing insurance coverage to more people only increases the total cost of health care, and with insurance, costs are controlled by undesirable increases in the use of managed care. Single payer proposals involve unacceptable government price controls.
Balanced Choice has the new ideas needed to fix the health care system. It provides the same universal coverage as a single payer system does, but it does not have government price controls. Overall, it costs less than is currently spent on health care in the U.S. Because it benefits consumers, providers, and employers, the resulting political alliance could be powerful enough to change the U. S. health care systems. This book begins curing the system by explaining how Balanced Choice works and what needs to be done.
To learn more about Balanced Choice or to download the first chapter of Balanced Choice: A Common Sense Cure for the U.S. Health Care Systems, visit www.BalancedChoiceHealthCare.org.
About the Author
Ivan J. Miller, Ph.D. has passionately worked for health care reform since 1994. He is a health care provider; has directed two nonprofit health care advocacy organizations; is an active consumer advocate in the political, educational and bureaucratic arenas of health care systems; and he speaks nationally on these topics. Dr. Miller has written 35 articles and two books. By analyzing health care financing from the perspectives of economics, a consumer advocate, and a provider advocate, he has developed a model, Balanced Choice, that puts common sense back in health care financing.
More information about Dr. Miller’s background as a health care reformer, advocate for psychology, and consumer advocate is available at the web site www.IvanJMiller.com.