WASHINGTON, D.C. — During a news conference call Wednesday, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, unveiled a new proposal that could help bring down health care costs and help give Ohioans more choice in selecting health insurance.
Brown, and guest on the call Dr. Donald Nguyen, a urologist at Dayton Children’s Hospital, explained how standardizing the costs of routine needs in health care could make health insurance more affordable.
“Costs should not be a barrier to life saving care,” Brown said. “We are working to bring down costs, give more choice, and offer more high quality insurance.”
A new report unveiled by Families USA details how a proposal known as “Federal Standardized Plans” could help reduce costs for some Ohioans who currently pay high out-of-pocket costs in addition to meeting their deductibles for care before their coverage kicks in.
“When my patients ask to defer or refuse routine tests because the costs come directly out of their pocket, I realize that these high deductible plans have gone too far, they are now interfering with care to my patients,” Nguyen said.
Standardized options – which provide an alternative to high-deductible plans – set standard deductibles, maximum out-of-pocket spending limits, and set co-payments or coinsurance for various services.
Our plan is not to make it mandatory, Brown said, we want to give consumers more benefits, but educate consumers to give them an option.
Nguyen added the health insurance market in Ohio is very competitive and may see this as a way to get even more people signed up for health insurance coverage.
Since the signing of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) six years ago, the uninsured rate has dropped dramatically.
“Many facts are just not debatable about the Affordable Care Act. Uninsured rates are the lowest they have been, and more Americans are covered now that weren’t before,” Nguyen said. “But as much progress we have made we still have a lot of work to do.”
Plans now seem to only cover catastrophic events instead of actual health care, Brown said. These standardized plans do not cost more or require a higher premium, although it may raise premiums for companies to stay competitive, none of the standardized plans would be mandatory.
The goal is to start getting insurance companies to offer these standardized plans as early as 2017.
Earlier this year, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized a rule that would create “standardized plans” to be offered on the health care exchange beginning in 2017 to help consumers make more informed choices.
