Selling ideas
Monday, January 26 2009
This evening’s Marketplace had an interview with Health Net CEO Jay Gellert; I listened while doing the dishes.
Gellert is also the chair of AHIP, the health insurance industry group, so it was a little surprising to hear him give away a lot of ground:
I think where we are is the following: first of all, we truly believe that government has a bigger role in terms of covering certain populations; so we don’t disagree with the president. We’re strong supporters of the expansion of the children’s program which the Congress has already done. We believe that Medicaid has to be expanded so it covers everyone who is below the poverty level; which it now doesn’t.
Bear in mind that what the President has advocated – assuming we’re talking about Obama – is fairly far-reaching, so it’s a little odd to hear to chair of AHIP affirming his plans. But there in the same breath was the catch:
In terms of the specific issue of the public option, our biggest concern is the following: right now the commercial population spends about a 100 billion dollars more because the government programs are under-reimbursing. If a public option is premised on expanding that, that means the people in the private programs will have an even bigger burden to pay.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it’s probably because Gellert committed to memory the study AHIP commissioned on “cost-shifting”. The premise of the study is that because doctors hospitals can and do charge insurance companies more than they charge the government, this is the same as the government forcing the insurance companies to pay for government programs. As near as I can tell, the study didn’t actually study anything new. Instead, it recast a great strength of government health programs – namely, leverage – as a liability, while giving it an ominous-sounding name. Obviously, the study was always destined to be a talking point for the health insurance industry, a way to shape the debate in their favor. That’s how Gellert used it.
When Gellert says, “We have to sell our ideas”, he’s talking about cost-shifting. Don’t buy it.
