At a Monday morning general session at EBN’s Benefit Forum & Expo, former Health Secretary Michael Leavitt warned benefits pros of the dangers to their plans that lie underneath the legalese in H.R. 3200 (the working health care reform legislation in the House).
Among the potential worrisome elements in the bill is the proposed health care advisory board, which Leavitt said, “would have one job, and that is to set the minimum federal standards for what a health plan looks like. This is where your benefits plans would be designed, and your would lose control over many of the tools and incentives that you currently use,” such as cost-sharing and health savings accounts.
Should H.R. 3200 pass — something Leavitt doubts — health insurance will be broken into three markets, he said: “The exchange market, which is the individual and small business market as we now know it; the large market, which would include large employers; and the public market, which would be an expanded version of Medicare and Medicaid.”
At the beginning of his remarks, Leavitt posed an important question to attendees: “Do we have a social contract that everyone is entitled to health care?”
As the health care reform debate moves forward, he said four basic questions are at the heart of it:
1. What is the limit? “How much can we afford? Could we survive as a country if every American has a right to health care?”
2. Who decides where the limit is? In other words, he noted, “What is the government’s role in health care? The debate should be whether government organizes the [health care] system or owns the system. I feel strongly the government should not own the system.”
3. How do we balance cost, access and quality? H.R. 3200, Leavitt said, “focuses primarily on expanding access, but does little to address cost.”
4. Who is going to pay?
You likely noticed — as I did — that Leavitt never asked: Is health care a right or a privilege? Not by accident, as it turns out. He said it’s neither. “I say health care is a need.”
Stay tuned for more BenefitNews.com and Daily Diversion updates from BF&E.
