Showing posts with label healthcare. Show all posts
Showing posts with label healthcare. Show all posts

Monday, April 11, 2011

VT healthcare bill

I think some people are confused about why IBM might be against the healthcare bill in the VT legislature.

Smaller employers are put in a class with other small employers, and their health plan terms are determined by an insurance company.  IBM is self-insured.  It is its own class, and it already has fiscal predictability in the corporate budget for healthcare, or at least far more than any smaller employer.  The status quo benefits IBM as a company; why would it want to change that?

Granted, even as an employee of IBM, I might still want to see the VT bill go through, because (according to what Sarahmac has read) it would actually lower our cost of healthcare coverage.  Better yet, I'd like the option of taking either the VT plan or the IBM plan.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

Just don't do anything to void the warranty on your body



This is why I'm interested in an experiment where health insurance is really insurance -- you pay a premium against acquiring some chronic condition -- and for the rest to be covered by HSAs. Now, according to the post, the vast majority of people aren't using as much basic health maintenance as they're paying in premiums. I do get the vague impression from other sources that there is a sentiment that if we simply gave the average Joe the money they're paying in premiums, they wouldn't spend it on basic health maintenance. If we really can't trust people to take care of themselves, we could mandate that everyone put enough money into their HSAs to cover basic health maintenance.

The question is whether to let individuals choose for themselves or try to nudge them into doing the "right" thing... though actually, major medical problems should be covered by the actual insurance, but the insurance company wouldn't pay out unless you've been getting regular checkups, where "major medical" and "regular" are defined in the insurance policy. Just like if you make a homeowner's claim because the roof caved in and the insurance company rejects it because the tiles haven't been replaced in 40 years.