In politics as in real life there are no magic bullets. Solutions often come draped in as many complications as the problems they seek to address.
Cap and trade will not save the environment.
Abstinence programs won't abort teen-aged STDs or pregnancies.
Taxing smokers won't snuff them out.
Bailing out banks won't save jobs. (Neither will trillion-dollar stimulus plans.)
And, if you'll pardon the pun, health care reform offers no exception. Tort reform is no quick fix. Studies show that capping malpractice awards today will reduce health care spending by roughly 2 percent over the next decade.
On the other hand, eliminating the anti-trust exemption on insurance carriers offers little in the way of salvation. Yeah, I know, it sounds like the perfect solution: "Stop giving those evil insurance carriers such special treatment."
Thing is, it's just not that simple. People much smarter than me have already pointed out that the law already prevents insurers from price fixing, carving up markets and state antitrust laws. Removing the exemption is a zero-sum game as far as that's concerned. Health care guru and Benefits Selling Expo keynote speaker Greg Scandlen offers some educated perspective.
"As NAIFA points out, the only thing that will be affected here is the ability of carriers to pool claims data for actuarial purposes," Scandlen explains. "The result will be that small carriers won't have enough historical information to project future costs. So they will not be able to determine how to price their products. So they will go out of business. So there will be less, not more, competition in the health insurance market."
At the end of the day, the magic bullet Congress just fired landed squarely on its foot.
Clunky health care reform "fixes" aside, you might notice that this month's issue of Benefits Selling features the return of our annual health care survey, produced in conjunction with the experts over at Oliver Wyman. There's a lot of good stuff in this year's study, which also features more broker input than ever before. Of course, that also means we couldn't possibly fit it all in the pages of this magazine, so make sure you check out our Web site for the rest of our findings.
