Build a Health Care Bill: Problem 1 – Coverage Between Jobs – Part 1

Problem 1:
In order to cover periods of temporary unemployment, enable people to buy inexpensive temporary group health insurance focused on catastrophic health events. It wouldn't need to cover office calls, vision, dental, psychiatric, or a lot of other things typical benefit packages cover.

Solution Ideas:
Background
There are some legal obstacles to allowing the unemployed to buy group health insurance focused on catastrophic health events. One obstacle is the prohibition from forming groups for the purpose of buying health insurance. This prohibition exists in most states and may exist in all 50 states.

Another obstacle is coverage requirements enforced by state insurance regulators. The coverage requirements differ from state to state but in all cases they require coverage of health care that exceeds the definition of a “catastrophic health event”. In all cases they unnecessarily increase the cost of insurance and push people into making the choice to forego health insurance during periods of unemployment.

Idea #1.
State Employment Agencies could create insurance groups and negotiate group catastrophic health insurance policies with private insurance companies. They could then enroll the unemployed in their group health insurance plan at the same time they sign up for unemployment benefits.

Idea #2.
Modify COBRA to allow a former employee to downgrade the coverage to “catastrophic health events” only.

Idea #3.
Enact incentives for organizations to offer health insurance options, especially catastrophic event health insurance to members.

Idea #4.
Enact a Federal exception to state insurance regulation to allow temporary catastrophic event health insurance that does not contain the mandatory coverage required by the various states.

Idea #5.
Enact incentives for the states to enact exceptions to their own insurance regulations to allow temporary catastrophic event health insurance that does not contain their mandatory coverage’s.

Additional ideas for solving this problem or ways to improve the ideas presented are welcome. As are any other problems you think should be addressed by health insurance reform legislation.

Contribute your ideas as comments to this blog or in the Discussion Board of the Facebook Group "Build a Health Care Bill: We Can Do It Better Than Congress". Or, if you received this by email you can reply by email.

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