Death of Wyden-Bennett

Jeff Greenberg first turned my attention to the Wyden-Bennett bill - and after reading it, I always thought it was a very good proposal for health care reform. David Brooks actually has a v. good op-ed piece today on the Baucus bill and Wyden/Bennett

Op-Ed Columnist - The Baucus Conundrum - NYTimes.com

More of a description on W/B is in the link from Brooks. But essentially one of my main concerns with the current insurance market and reasons to support W/B is the following:

1) Insurance in America is tied to employment
2) Most Americans switch jobs every few years (~5-15 jobs lifetime)
3) This in turn means that Americans switch their insurance company every few years (in the past decade I have switched insurance companies three times, average time with an insurance company is ~3-7yrs)
4) Insurance companies have little incentive to try to promote health preventative behaviors since all that benefit would accrue to another insurance company, and ultimately Medicare (where we will all get our insurance from eventually).
5) If you decouple insurance from employment and create an insurance exchange market (key elements of W/B), then insurance companies are more likely to have customers for a longer time, thus create sane products that promote healthy behaviors so they can accrue some of the cost benefit (while improving the lives of their customers)

Unfortunately, it seems the W/B is a no-go. And the question remains - to support Baucus bill or not...