Update on Health Care Reform

Just wanted to update everyone who might not have heard President Obama talk about health care reform this afternoon. Since it's still very much in the works and there is not a finished bill yet in Congress or the Senate, it was the last subject on his agenda.

I took great hope when he said that there would be a public option in the plan for health care reform. But, what was even better, was that he said the private health insurance companies would have to follow certain rules if they wanted to be on the list.

-- They would no longer be able to exclude new patients from access to health insurance because of pre-existing conditions.

This was very exciting to us at Mindbridge, because this makes life so difficult for so many people who either need to change jobs or for those whose company switches providers!

-- We are expecting that Rescission of Coverage from health insurance will no longer be permitted. He said that private health insurance companies would no longer be allowed to serve only the healthy.

This will be important to make the public option affordable. The only way that any insurance works is to spread the risk among many. If the public option were to inherit all the sick people and the private insurance has all the healthy ones, the public option would be way too expensive.

There were questions about the unfairness of the public option. The President scoffed. He said that since the government had been accused of "not being able to do anything right" he found it illogical that the private insurance companies would be complaining that they could not compete.

Yeah for Obama!