Insurance Reform: Leveling the Playing Field?

While we know that health reform will affect the way insurers interact with current and potential customers, specific details change daily. This policy brief from Health Affairs and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation takes a close look at potential health insurance reforms, explaining what different proposed reforms could mean for individuals and the country as a whole.

Crafted by experts at Health Affairs, the Brookings Institution and Georgetown University, this brief identifies the challenges presented by current health insurance policy, which leaves most regulation to the states. Current reform proposals being considered by Congress would create national guidelines, require insurers to provide coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions, and would not allow insurers to rescind their coverage once it is in effect. Reform proposals also would keep insurance companies from charging more based on geography, and would limit the difference in price that insurers are allowed to charge based on age, family size and the kind of insurance product purchased. Supporters of these reform proposals say that they will make insurance more affordable, especially for the chronically ill, those with pre-existing conditions and the elderly. Opponents of reform think that while these ideas could work in principle, current proposals won’t effectively reach their intended goals. Opponents also assert that the current proposals would increase insurance premiums for young people to a level so high that they avoid purchasing it, which would result in higher premiums for all others.