Health Insurance Consumer Information

Mila Kofman, Associate Research Professor at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute, was quoted in a Wall Street Journal story on one Utah company’s proposal to market discriminatory health insurance practices to US businesses.

Commenting on the entrepreneur’s business idea, which is that employers should drop group health insurance coverage for their employees and instead provide individual insurance policies for eligible employees, Kofman said:

“I think this is blatantly illegal … I would not advise any employer to do this.”

Read the story online: Employers Turn to Alternative for Insuring Staff.

Karen Pollitz, Project Director of the Health Policy Institute at Georgetown University, spoke to USA Today about a new set of high-deductible health care plans being offered by United Healthcare and others.

These plans offer financial incentives, in the form of significantly lower deductibles, for enrollees who submit to health tests that show they fall into generally healthy standards. This is advertised as promoting healthy lifestyles which in turn can lower illness rates in some categories. But do the damaging consequences to privacy and potential discrimination against the less-than-healthy, outweigh the benefits?

“A key protection in the Americans with Disabilities Act is that your employer can’t discriminate against you based on health status,” says Karen Pollitz at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute. “They can’t even ask about your health, with the only exception being if they ask through a voluntary program. You could argue that this program is not voluntary.”

Read the story at the USA Today website: Plan bases deductible on health tests, sees costs fall.

Assistant research professor Mila Kofman of Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute was quoted in an Associated Press story about the increasing numbers of hospital patients and health care consumers who use the web to research medical costs and healthcare quality.

Noting that hospitals rarely put the actual charges that insurers pay on their web sites, Kofman is quoted as saying: “There is a certain level of faith that we have to put in other experts to help us make decisions … I think if I was sick, I would want my physician to make recommendations on proper course of treatment.”

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