NRA teams up with UnitedHealth

Health insurance and restaurant workers—anyone game? Yes, it is one of the areas where insurance companies and the restaurant authorities are working. In a new development, the National Restaurant Association and insurance giant UnitedHealth Group Inc. are teaming up. The collaboration would help to make coverage more accessible to millions of restaurant workers without health benefits. This is clearly a more concrete step than the healthcare reforms that are to be implemented within the coming four years.

It is clear that this initiative, though small, could mean a new venture of great importance—it marks one of the largest private-sector efforts to expand health insurance coverage when everybody else is focussing on the government led ventures of healthcare reforms.

The initiative would mean that around 4 million to 6 million restaurant employees without health benefits would be provided health coverage. This means around 10 percent of the nation's current population of uninsured people!

The main difference between this initiative and the healthcare reforms is that there is no obligation on the company to provide health coverage—it still holds the right to refuse health cover in case of an pre-existing condition, which again would be challenged in 2014.

Health Cost Hike Post-Reform

Healthcare reform has faced mixed responses from various states, counties, organizations, bodies and lobbies. The recent one is from the market, where health costs are expected to get higher after the reforms are implemented.

Online articles are mentioning that a lot of employers expect to see a slight increase in costs as they work to implement U.S. healthcare reforms for 2011. However, there are many employers who are still figuring out how the reforms will be implemented—clearly, they are not clear how it will impact their businesses.

Extending the health insurance to part-time workers is another area where employers are bit concerned. It is clear that there is lot of pressure on companies to implement the reforms outlined in the bill, and many of them are still struggling to measure the changes.

It is clear that as the passing of bill has undergone a lot of mixed response replete with confusion, the implementation part will also have its share where people will fall non-compliant just because they do not understand what to do and how to implement.

Small business lobby joins challenge to health law

After a lot of opposition from various states and bodies, the healthcare reform has found another one standing against it—the most influential small business lobby of the nation, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), is joining a court challenge to President Barack Obama's health care overhaul. The argument put forth is that Americans cannot be required to obtain insurance coverage under the Constitution. Though at the same time, the administration argues that the coverage requirements rest on a solid constitutional foundation—the power of Congress to regulate interstate commerce.

20 state attorneys general and governors have filed a federal lawsuit against the healthcare reform bill. The National Federation of Independent Business will join this lawsuit. It is clear that NFIB's involvement would ensure that constitutional arguments for overturning the health care law will be extensively aired in the fall campaigns. Given the number of members that NFIB boosts, 350,000 members to be precise, there is going to be significant impact of such a group of local activists.

There are whole lot of activities going on against or pro to the healthcare reform bill. All this is making it interesting and intriguing. As residents of the US, do you feel concerned or involved enough so as to take a peep into?

Quality of medical care and costs involved

It seems that the costs associated with medical care are going to increase in the future. A new report issued by the Department of Health and Human Services projects the cost of health care will increase by $511 billion over the next 10 years. So, even if Obama administration’s goal of providing coverage for up to 34 million Americans is achieved, the overhaul could fall short of controlling costs.

It order to make sure that health insurance is extended to the uninsured Americans and also the costs are curbed, quality of the medical care needs to be improved. It is important to note here that quality-wise, we stand on the 37th rank. A lot of medical care in unnecessary, which often results in mounting the costs involved in this industry.

Reward for quality should be a clause in the reimbursement. Preventive care should be focussed more in order to lower the need of curative care, which often involves higher costs.

It goes without saying that quality always pays and when it comes to health, there is no substitute to it. What other plans you could think in improving the quality of healthcare in order to reduce costs?