The health insurance reform enacted in Massachusetts in 2006and the proposals of the leading Democratic presidential candidatesseek to achieve universal health insurance coverage while relyingprimarily on private insurance. Achieving universality is achallenge in any system that assigns insurance coverage, whetherprivate or public, to identifiable individuals. The difficultiesof finding, enrolling, and accounting for all eligible participantsescalate when most of the financing for coverage is expectedto come from premiums paid directly to multiple insurers ratherthan from funds collected centrally by the government throughtaxation. To address this problem, some reform models incorporatean . . . [Full Text of this Article]
Source Information
Dr. Glied is a professor and chair of the Department of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York.
An audio interview with Dr. Glied can be heard at www.nejm.org.