Less Health Insurance and Better Health Care:
Two-Tiered Health Benefits Models
POLICY FORUMFriday, November 2, 2001
12:00 p.m.
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
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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.