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Employer Mandate |
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An "employer mandate" usually refers to a state or federal measure requiring that large employers provide health insurance benefits to their employees. An alternative approach is to require employers to either "play" by providing health benefits or "pay" — through higher wages, or by giving a specified sumper full-time employee, to the state or federal government so that those entities can pay for benefits.
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Estimating Costs/Controlling Costs |
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In 2006, health care spending in the United States finally topped $2 trillion. That year health care became 16% of gross domestic product. Several factors are now pushing these costs even further up, including the aging of the population, advancement of technology, the obesity epidemic and skewed incentives
within the system. That ever-rising price tag is a burden not just on government health care programs, such as Medicare; it has also put an increasing strain on companies that provide health insurance to their employees. Because the cost of health insurance keeps going up, these companies find themselves at a disadvantage compared with companies that operate from other countries where health care costs are not nearly as high.
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Expand Public Programs |
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Many plans work by expanding public programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, or the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Proponents of this approach believe that it is an easy way to get more people covered.
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Guaranteed Issue |
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Insurers must sell a policy to anyone regardless of pre-existing conditions under guaranteed issue laws. Guaranteed issue policies are often combined with community rating policies. Under "pure" community rating policies, insurers would be forced to charge the same price to every policyholder, regardless of age, sex, or any other indicator of health risk. The result of guaranteed issue policies tends to be that healthy people are charged more so that sick people can be charged less.
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Health Savings Accounts/Consumer-Driven Health |
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Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are one of the first developments in so-called consumer-driven health care. Proponents of consumer-driven health care believe that individuals must have some "skin in the game" to make smart decisions about their own health care, and that this will bring down health care costs overall. HSAs are tax-free accounts into which a consumer and/or his/her employer can deposit money that can be used to pay for health services.
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Issues 
