Letters: Doctors' role is key to health-insurance system

ISSUE | HEALTH CARE

Doctors' role is key

Dr. Peter Ubel's commentary about the complexity of health-insurance plans made the important point that caregivers are unprepared to help patients make cost-conscious decisions about their care ("Choices, plans overwhelming for patients," Friday). Yet many employers that adopt consumer-driven coverage pay little attention to the evidence that employees with high-deductible plans tend to cut back on beneficial as well as wasteful care. That jeopardizes patients' health and could undermine employers' savings when poorly managed health results in high-cost care or disability leaves.

Better-engaged doctors could help employers bend the cost curve without sacrificing the health of their employees or the performance of their business.

|Brian Gifford, director, research and measurement, Integrated Benefits Institute, San Francisco, bgifford@ibiweb.org

Try a universal plan

Dr. Peter Ubel explained patients' difficulties dealing with the costs of medical care and insurance coverage and doctors' difficulties in guiding their patients through the uncertainty. Unfortunately, he did not suggest useful remedies.

Educating medical students will do little. Insurance regulations change annually, so anything students learn will be obsolete before graduation. State laws requiring providers to publish health-care prices won't help as long as such publications are difficult to find and understand. And the prices change more frequently than the insurance regulations.

The most efficient and resolute way to overcome this growing problem is universal health care. It would provide all U.S. citizens with lifelong medical coverage for all illnesses and injuries. The uniform cost would solve many of the problems with the for-profit insurance industry.

|Dr. Steven Barrer, Huntingdon Valley, sjbarrer@gmail.com