Affect of Super Simple Health Plan on Birth

For the past two days, I've written about the super simple two line health plan, which I put forward, not as a proposal, but rather as an example of how a major change could be made without a 2000 page bill.

The super simple plan is:
1) All US citizens and legal residents are automatically enrolled in the Medicaid program and will pay a fee equal to 5% of adjusted gross income, unless exempt by paragraph #2.

2) Persons having proof of health insurance or who have sufficient assets not to need health insurance are exempt from the requirements of paragraph #1.

So now the question is: “How would this plan affect. birth practices?”

The most obvious answer would be that with everyone being covered, less malpractice suits will be filed, since a large number of suits for birth injury are for the purpose of getting medical bills paid for the baby's treatment. Since medical bills a re covered under Medicaid, or insurance, r than alleviates the need for these lawsuits.

As an incentive for people to buy health insurance as opposed to Medicaid, the insurance companies might offer to pay obstetricians and family physicians and midwives a lot more money per birth in the hope that they would then refuse the meager Medicaid reimbursement amounts.

Medicaid might have to increase their payments to birth care providers, so they will continue to accept Medicaid patients.

Insurance companies might embrace concierge birth facilities as a way of keeping insured’s with private insurance from changing to Medicaid.

This is not comprehensive analysis, but then remember, the original proposal is only two paragraphs.

Have a great weekend.

Alan.
Alan@birthconference.org