The Insurance Connector approach builds on and connects current public and private group insurance through the creation of a new national entity that would offer a structured choice of private health plans as well as a Medicare option to individuals and small employers. Enrollment in some plan would be required. The availability of both publicly sponsored and private plans would help induce competition not only among private insurers, but also between private insurers and the public plan. This would put pressure on all plans to operate more effectively and efficiently. The expansion would achieve near-universal coverage.
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As shown in Exhibit ES-5, these estimated savings succeed in "bending the curve" to about halfway between the currently projected trend and the amount that would maintain the current proportion of GDP devoted to health spending. A policy of guaranteeing health insurance for all combined with selected savings options yields savings in national health expenditures of $1.5 trillion over 10 years. This represents an extremely large amount of resources that could be available to address other societal needs or wants, either within the health system or elsewhere. Moreover, an environment in which affordable health care is available, markets operate with better information, and payment reform offers potential for even greater savings, can produce dynamic, synergistic gains over the longer term. The first-order estimates are thus likely conservative compared with the potential gain over time.
C. Schoen, S. Guterman, A. Shih, J. Lau, S. Kasimow, A. Gauthier, and K. Davis, Bending the Curve: Options for Achieving Savings and Improving Value in U.S. Health Spending, The Commonwealth Fund, December 2007
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http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publ...?doc_id=620087 on 12/18/2007.
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