Small businesses, health insurers team to make coverage affordable

"Essential" + No state mandates = potential trouble. There are some items that need to be included such as mammograms, paying for oral contraceptives, etc. Taking away a state's right to determine what is important will undermine states rights.

Health Insurance reform must begin with individuals taking better care of their health! I have been an independent insurance agent for over thirty years, and I am amazed at what I see in observing the health status of American workers. Most are overweight with poor eating habits, smoking and drinking too much is still prevalent, and many have no regular exercise program. I often hear from an employer and/or employee that there are no real health issues. Then we complete applications, and find many are obese, taking multiple medications for elevated blood pressure and high cholesterol, diabetes is rampant, and lots have back problems and/or knee ailments due to being overweight. They do not eat sensibly, and have little self discipline when it comes to smoking, excessive drinking and regular exercising. Then they complain about the high cost of premiums when the monthly cost of their medications often exceeds the premium being quoted for health insurance.

The American worker has become fat, lazy, and full of excuses, but is not willing to blame themselves for being the major cause of the high cost of health insurance premiums. It's time we look at the root cause, and not blame the insurance company or the doctors or hospitals for the problems we have created!

Personal responsibility is important, but it is NOT the root cause of the healthcare crisis! After all, managing one’s health effectively is a very complex issue involving cultural, economic, psychological, educational, and genetic factors.

Examples include our country’s history of failing to focus on prevention and self-management training, of making healthy food much more expensive (and less profitable) than junk food, and of equating the “good life” with gluttony, creature comforts, short-term hedonism, etc. Major lifestyle change in such an environment is extremely difficult, especially if a person has poor genetics or lacks a good social support network, knowledge, emotional health, and the confidence that s/he can succeed. It’s even worse when a culture like ours inhibits motivation by rejecting delayed gratification and personal sacrifice, making healthy eating and gym membership too expensive for many, and so on. And with a perverse financial system that promotes expensive care unassociated with quality, we end up with a high cost system that delivers LOW VALUE to consumers. On top of all that, the cost of insurance continually climbs due to administrative overhead, the profit motive (insurers, drug companies, medical device manufacturers, hospitals & clinics), the high cost of malpractice insurance, defensive medicine, rudimentary clinical guidelines for diagnostics and treatments decision that lack adequate precision, failure to embrace lower effective and lower cost complementary and alternative medicine, lack of attention to the mind-body connection (e.g., how emotions and stress affective physical health), unrestricted end-of-life care, failure to focus on cost-effectiveness, etc.

So, when the consumer is blamed for the high cost of care in order to defend the health insurance industry, you had better consider all the factors above that contribute or your argument is hallow.

I guess the best part of competition between the public and private insurance will be that it can bring down the excessive costs and raise the quality of service to survive particularly in private sector , therefore there is no need to worry about the expensive medical costs over time, as EUROPE tells it.