Spotlight: Healthcare Reform

This post used to appear on a page of the website that no longer exists. I wrote this before Obamacare was passed.

I work for an organization whose nickname is The Funds – you really don’t want to hear the whole name. The Funds is a not-for-profit organization that administers the multi-employer health and retirement plans used by the unionized part of the coal industry.

The time I’ve spent processing health applications and learning about the various health programs we administer has given me a greater appreciation for healthcare as an issue.

While I disagree with many liberals on the need for universal healthcare, where the government becomes a singular payer of medical costs, I do believe a lot of the debate has lost the distinction between universal healthcare and universal insurance. Most of the talk today is of the latter, where individuals are provided insurance that is partially or wholly paid for by the individual, and run by private companies, and the government’s role is primarily to fill gaps in insurance and to help control costs.

And there are many other issues associated with this large industry, including medical bankruptcies, biomedical research, regulation of HMOs, improving health technology while preserving patient privacy, just to name a few.

In addition to this blurb, I wrote extensively about healthcare reform policy ideas in the otherwise fictional anthology From Maverick to Statesman.