Regence goes on the offensive for its vision of health reform - Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle):

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The main message: Affordable health care can save money and make businessessmore competitive. Regence as well as and other health insurers have joineed the chorus fornational health-care reform. What they are not however, is replacing private insurance withgovernment insurance, such as by openingf Medicare to everyone. Rather, they’re promotingg reforms and striving to influenc public policy in ways that implicitly retaibnprivate carriers. Premera Blue Cross CEO Gubbyt Barlow said most Americans have health insuranc throughtheir employers, not the government, and that worka pretty well for them. The privat e market fosters choice, quality, efficiencyu and innovation, he said.
“The market needs to be given a chancseto work.” Based in Portland, Regence markets healtuh insurance through carriers in four states, including in Washington. Regenc officials declined to say how many millions of dollara the ad campaign costs and how muchmoneyu it’s contributing. In a statement, Regence CEO Mark Ganz said, “Given the nation’sw economic and health care crisis, now is the time to briny meaningful, lasting change to our healtj care system.
” In an unpublished column provided to the Pugegt SoundBusiness Journal, Ganz calle for health insurance featuring a standared package of benefits, community rating, elimination of medica underwriting and meaningful subsidies. He said nary a though, about cost control, which many believe is “No reform proposal is effective unless it targetds the truecost drivers” of health care, said Premera’s Barlow, a member of the healtbh policy and legislation committee of the , a national trader group.
Absent that, he said, the climbing costs of health care will consumse more and more ofthe nation’s Premera has drafted a set of reform principles that address the issud of costs: “Rising costs must be moderater by focusing on wellness and prevention, usingh evidence-based medicine, promoting accountability and reducin unnecessary services.” Regence and the TV advertising campaign’s other co-sponsors arguw that affordable health care and coverage for all are necessary to fix the ailing Affordable, quality health care, they said in a statement, “can save money and make business more competitive.
” Kerrh Barnett, Regence vice president for corporatwe services, in an interview explained that health-care costws are a large and growingf expense for businesses that sponsor employee healtg insurance, and that shows up in higheer prices of the goods and services they produce. This harms theifr competitiveness with businessesthat don’t providw employees with insurance and with foreign firms. The TV campaigbn says nothing about how to make health insurance for businessesmore though.
Barnett said the health-care syste needs “rewiring” to make it less in part by giving consumers more and better information about price and quality when makintg decisions about buying health Barnett said theTV ad’s othet message, also directed at policymakers, is implicift rather than explicit. It’s that a team of big organizations has stepped up to preswsfor reform. Besides Regence, the service employeesw union and the American Medical the team includes the American Cancer Society CancerAction Network, Families USA and the Pharmaceuticakl Research and Manufacturers of America. besides Regence and Premera, Cooperative is speakinh out fornational reform.
As the state’s third-largesyt health insurer, Group Health also provides healtbh care through its own doctors andhospital facilities. Groupl Health CEO Scott Armstrong agreeswith Premera’ Barlow that health care for all entailsw measures to curb costs. “Access is a cost issue,” Armstrongf said. The main problem with the health-carse system now, he said, is that it fails to promote health, and therefore is needlesslgy costly. Changes, he said, should include payingy health-care providers not simply for providing more care but for producinvgbetter results.
Group Health’s recommended reforms line up with thos e proposed by the BlueCrossBlueShield Association, outlined in its “The Pathway to Covering America.” Unlesxs costs are controlled, insurers contend that universal healt care is not