Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Joe Normandy, the executive director of the Vermont Insurance Agents Association, representing the state’s independent insurance agencies.
The federal health care bill calls them “navigators.” By design, according to Dr. William Hsiao, they will “provide information in a manner that is culturally and linguistically appropriate.”
Does this mean somebody will help Vermonters figure out which health insurance plan is right for them and talk plain English?
It doesn’t take a Harvard professor and an inflated state budget to help Vermonters understand their health insurance. The state’s independent insurance agents working at more than 200 agencies around the state have been providing that service for many years. When they weren’t visiting your office to review your coverage and help you choose affordable insurance options, your local agent was serving as the usher in church, coach your child’s soccer team, or serving on your school board. In her spare time, she devoted valuable work hours to learning about the latest trends and insurance products, fulfilling the continuing education needs of a licensed insurance professional.
Until now, these services have been provided by an industry that understands people, the local economy, Vermont’s small businesses and local employers. We study the options and get to know our customers. If offering a high-deductible health plan coupled with employee health savings accounts was a good option for your business, we would tell you so; and if we give poor advice, our businesses fail — a marketplace decision.
Under single payer, the government will be your advisor. If the government gives you poor advice, who fails? If you sign up for bronze coverage and you need gold level medical care do you take out a second mortgage? Don’t get me started on the portability issues.
The loss of independent advice is just one element of our modern medical lives that would be threatened under a government-run, single-payer health care system, such as the one now under debate in the Vermont legislature. There are others.
Have you been to see the doctor or gone to the emergency room lately? What was your experience? In every case where critical care is needed, our doctors and nurses provide the appropriate level of emergency care. If your condition is not critical or life-threatening, you will be treated at the more evenly-paced immediate care facility, or examined by appointment in your doctor’s office.
More than 90 percent of Vermonters are already covered by health insurance, and most are satisfied. In Vermont, our health care professionals and health service organizations, such as hospitals and nursing homes, provide some of the best, most comprehensive and readily available medical care in the modern world.
Yes, there are problems with our current system. It is administratively burdensome. But scrapping a system that works well for nearly all of our people in favor on an untested, undeveloped system is just plain wrong. It is the equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bath water.
The single payer system will cost people more. Why? Because all Vermonters care what will come out of their paychecks. Non-working Vermonters, regardless of income and ability to pay, will not be covered by a payroll tax. Their care will come out of the paychecks of the working class.
The single payer system will threaten employment. Why? Those employers close to the borders and those employers whose livelihood is dependent upon interstate business will be put at a competitive disadvantage as state mandated health care taxes mount.
The single payer system may not save any money. The government already runs a single-payer health care system. It’s called Medicaid. Soon, the failed Catamount Health plan, a similar concept, will be rolled into it. By chronically underpaying doctors and other providers over many years, the government has shifted this burden to those who pay for their own insurance. Do you trust them to go further?
As Joint Fiscal Office Analyst Steven Klein told the Legislature last week, the problem is that costs grow faster than revenues, and utilization will grow as our population ages. Vermont is already one of the oldest states in the country.
There are savings to be found in processing claims and paying providers more efficiently. But we shouldn’t destroy the parts of the system that are working — including the professional advice rendered by licensed local insurance agents — without a clearer vision of what lies ahead.
