An "Architectural Digest"

Publication Date:

Publisher:

Author(s): J.A. Meyer; E.K. Wicks

Research Area: Health

Type: White Paper

Abstract:

A key challenge in covering the uninsured is to fit together in a seamless way a series of reforms that, taken together, will bring affordable health insurance to millions of Americans. These reforms might, for example, include making more lower-income Americans eligible for public programs such as Medicaid, tax credits for lower-income people to help them obtain affordable private health insurance, new purchasing arrangements to gather together people lacking access to affordable insurance and ineligible for public programs, requirements that all individuals obtain health insurance or that employers help fund it, and reforms that limit insurers' ability to set premiums that reflect the risk of each individual or group. Of course, piecing these components together is a bigger challenge under the reform plans that build on our current mixed system of employer coverage, individually purchased insurance and government programs than under a single-payer plan. The Covering America Project includes plans of both varieties. In fact, the various proposals emerging from our project could form a number of points spaced across a broad spectrum representing differing roles for government and the private sector (and differing roles for the states vis a vis the federal government).