• SUPPORT CATO
• FOR STUDENTS
• FOR MEDIA
• FREE NEWSLETTERS

• HOME

• ABOUT

• BLOG

• CATO STORE

• CENTERS & PROJECTS

• EVENTS

Cato Live

Event Archives

Events Multimedia

Event FAQs

Cato University

Directions to Cato

Contact Cato

• EXPERTS

• MULTIMEDIA

• PUBLICATIONS

• RESEARCH AREAS

• SPEAKERS BUREAU

• SUPPORT CATO

• CATO UNBOUND

• DOWNSIZING
  GOVERNMENT.ORG

• ELCATO.ORG

• LIBERTARIANISM.ORG

Less Health Insurance and Better Health Care:
Two-Tiered Health Benefits Models

Featuring Lawrence H. Mirel, Commissioner of Insurance and Securities Regulation, District of Columbia; Kenneth J. Linde, Destiny Health Insurance Company; Helen Darling, Washington Business Group on Health.

The Cato Institute
1000 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001

Watch the Event in Real Video
Listen to the Event in Real Audio (Audio Only)
Read the event transcript (PDF, 60 pp, 108 kb)

Managed care practices not only have infuriated health care practitioners and consumers; they also don't seem to constrain health spending anymore. The traditional model of comprehensive health insurance is designed for conflict and turmoil, because contracts are negotiated by insurers and employers -- instead of physicians, hospitals, and consumers. D.C. insurance commissioner Lawrence Mirel suggests that employer-based health plans might deal better with two different tiers of health care needs through two separate tiers of payments. High-deductible group insurance policies would cover catastrophic illness and individual health accounts could handle routine health care expenses.

Our panel will examine how health insurers and employers could provide less insurance coverage but help workers obtain more consumer-driven health care.