Tuesday, 3 January 2012
Government To Add Small Insurance Fee To Fund Research
Beginning this year, the American government will be adding on a fee to peoples’ health insurance plans that will be used to fund research to discover which medical procedures, tests, treatments, and drugs are the most effective. The research is a part of President Obama's new health care legislation and will try to determine if new prescription medications are any better than less expensive older generic types.
However, according to an article by SFGate.com, many people are suspicious of the new research fee since they view it as a tax and could become an issue in this election year. The research will be performed by a new governmental agency which was formed by Congress called The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute.
The government has already started funding the institute and starting in 2012 there will be a $1 insurance fee per person that will go towards the research. However, the Treasury Department said that the fee might not be collected until 2013, but insurance companies would still owe the government the money that is to be collected in 2012. During the second year of the program, the fee will double to $2 per insured person. After that, the rate will be adjusted according to the rate of inflation.
Kathryn Nix, who is an insurance analyst with Heritage Foundation wonders if the results of the research will be used to make insurance coverage determinations. However, Dr. Joe Selby, who is the institute’s director, said his organization won’t make the decisions since that will be the job of doctors and patients. Selby said the institute isn’t a policy-making organization and its job is to simply carry out research and make the findings of it available.
Some representatives of the insurance industry feel that policyholders could be encouraged to visit doctors and hospitals which provide the most effective methods of treatment and those who go elsewhere may have to pay higher co-payments, such as people do now when they pay extra charges for buying non-preferred drugs. The article states that several major insurance companies are doing their own research, but the government-funded studies are seen as more credible.
At the moment, drug companies just have to prove that their new medications are more effective than sugar pills to gain governmental marketing approval. They don’t have to show that the medication is better than a competing brand.
