Gov. Crist's lesson on unsound policies for health reform

Gov. Crist's victory for unaffordable underinsurance

Quote of the Day
May 23, 2008

From the Sun-Sentinel.com:

Delivering on Gov. Charlie Crist’s top election-year priority, the Florida Legislature on (May 2, 2008) approved a health insurance package to extend no-frills coverage to the state’s 3.8 million uninsured. Crist called the health-care package “historic legislation” that will be a model for the rest of the nation.

From the Comment (Don McCanne):

Some model. It would reduce insurance premiums by stripping down benefits through measures such as limiting hospitalization and specialized services and by capping payments. Since this “doesn’t cost taxpayers a dime,” the premiums would still be unaffordable for most individuals currently without coverage. Obviously this model will not work for individuals who have health care needs.

http://www.pnhp.org/news/2008/may/gov-crists-victory-for-unaffordable-underinsurance

And...

Florida's health plan for the uninsured has few takers

By Doug Trapp
American Medical News
February 1, 2010

Florida Gov. Charlie Crist didn't establish a specific enrollment goal for Cover Florida, the state's unsubsidized private insurance program for the uninsured, when he announced the start of enrollment in January 2009. But in a state with approximately 3.8 million uninsured adults, the fact that only 5,246 people signed up for one of the 27 plans in the program's first 11 months appears to have defied all expectations.

The authorizing legislation instructed participating insurers to offer at least two types of plans: one with catastrophic and emergency department coverage, and one without.

Plan subscribers... must wait 12 months before their preexisting conditions are covered. Also, insurers balance the risk of covering such conditions by setting benefit limits as low as $25,000 each year and $50,000 in a lifetime for catastrophic plans, for example.

United HealthGroup -- one of the two companies offering statewide Cover Florida plans -- does not know why plan enrollment has been low, said spokesman Roger Rollman. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida -- the other company offering a statewide plan -- directed questions to the state.

http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2010/02/01/gvsd0201.htm

Comment: 

By Don McCanne, MD

Today's message is not meant to be an "I told you so," even if I did tell you. The point of the message is that health policy science has advanced to a level that the consequences of policies in various reform proposals are fully predictable. "Well, let's try this and see how it goes" is no longer acceptable, especially for our entire $2.5 trillion health care industry.

Gov. Charlie Crist has provided us with a very valuable lesson with his "'historic legislation' that will be a model for the rest of the nation." His "Cover Florida" program has left 99.9 percent of the uninsured without any coverage, while providing the other 0.1 percent with coverage that won't work if you need health care.

This may an extreme example, but the cardinal principle is crucial. It is unsound to throw together a bunch of policies chosen based on political considerations, and then pretend that the flaws will be fixed later. You start with a core structure based on sound policies that have been proven to work.

The hybrid model before Congress, using private health insurance plans and public programs, is the most expensive model of reform, even though an important stated goal, when this process began, was to slow the increases in health care spending. The feeble measures included in the bill that allegedly would control costs do not pass basic tests of health policy science.

The hybrid model also was supposed to cover everyone, but health policy science has demonstrated that this model can't do that. Tens of millions will be left without coverage, a number sure to increase with time.

Charlie Crist's silly program may be an embarrassment, but that does not compare with the shame that members of Congress should be experiencing simply because they would bankrupt, maim, and kill people by walking away from sound health policy science, while they pursue what they believe will be a political victory. What a terrible, terrible shame.