Healthy Wisconsin Health Insurance
The Wisconsin Senate last month approved "one of the most sweeping health care reform proposals in the country," and although the bill has "scant chance of becoming law this year, ... anyone interested in rising health care costs" and the number of the uninsured "will want to watch how the debate evolves," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.
The Healthy Wisconsin universal health insurance coverage plan, which would provide coverage for 276,000 people who have been uninsured for more than one year, would be financed by a 9% to 12% tax on employer payrolls and a 4% tax on employees' wages.
Wisconsin Health Insurance
The legislation would establish HMOs that would be affiliated with large physician groups and hospitals and would establish a fee-for-service plan -- similar to Medicare -- that would allow beneficiaries to go to any physician or hospital they choose. The plan is intended to increase competition and remove incentives for doctors and hospitals to provide "inefficient or duplicative care" by paying them a set amount each month, according to the Journal Sentinel.
The Journal Sentinel reports, "Variations" of the debate over creating a universal coverage system "already are taking place in Pennsylvania and California, which also are considering health reform, and among presidential candidates." A "key question" in Wisconsin is whether establishing a system "controlled in part by the government and based on taxes" is the most effective way to address the health care system, according to the Journal Sentinel.
The debate also "could indicate just how much support exists for universal coverage -- and the intensity of that support," the Journal Sentinel reports. Kate Bundorf, a professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, said a recent analysis of attitudes toward universal coverage found that not everyone who supports national health insurance also supports a redistribution of wealth and government intervention, which both are necessary to achieve universal health care, according to the Journal (Boulton, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 7/21).
Editorial
A proposal by Wisconsin Democrats that seeks to make their state "a petri dish for government-run health care" is "especially instructive because it reveals where the 'single-payer,' universal coverage folks end up," the Wall Street Journal writes in an editorial. According to the editorial, the proposal, which would extend health insurance to all state residents younger than age 65, would cost an estimated $15.2 billion annually -- $3 billion more than the state collects in taxes. The proposal would impose an employment tax on wages and "includes a tax escalator clause allowing an additional 1.5 percentage payroll tax to finance higher outlays in the future," the editorial states. "One reason to expect costs to soar is that the state may become a mecca for the unemployed, uninsured and sick from all over North America" because the proposal would only require that individuals live in the state for one year before they become eligible, according to the editorial.
Supporters of the proposal "use the familiar argument for national health care that this will save money (about $1.8 billion a year) through efficiency gains by eliminating the administrative costs of private insurance," but "those costs won't vanish; they'll merely shift to all taxpayers and businesses," the editorial states.
In addition, the health insurance coverage bill proposal is "openly hostile to market incentives to contain costs," the editorial states. Private companies "are making modest progress in sweating out health care inflation by making patients more cost-conscious" through increased copayments, health savings accounts and wellness programs, but the proposal "moves in the opposite direction," the editorial states. "So where will the savings come from? Where they always do in any government plan: Rationing via price controls and, as costs rise, waiting periods and coverage restrictions," the editorial states (Wall Street Journal, 7/24).
Reprinted with permission from kaisernetwork.org. You can view the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, and sign up for email delivery at kaisernetwork.org/email . The Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report is published for kaisernetwork.org, a free service of The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. 2007 Advisory Board Company and Kaiser Family Foundation. All rights reserved.