The Four-Party Health Care System – Part 4

The Summer 2009 issue of The Independent Review included the article “The Modern Health Care Maze: Development and Effects of the Four-Party System” by Charles Kroncke and Ronald F. White. The four-party health care system seemed liked a successful solution to the failing three-party system. See Part 3

However, as the four-party system became more costly to the insurance companies, insurance policies began to include deductibles, co-payments, and lifetime limits. And a “large number of patients with pre-existing conditions were excluded from coverage.”

But this employment-based system already left out many people such as the unemployed, the part-time worker, the self-employed, and those employees working for small businesses that could not provide health insurance.

As the number of uninsured patients grew, the four-party payment system was in jeopardy. The federal government stepped in again to rescue it by creating Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 – “removing the two most costly patient populations from the private coverage pools (the elderly and the poor).”

But these programs could not continue to prop up the failing four-party system. They just delayed the inevitable. “The current crisis in health care in the United States has been fueled by diminishing access, dubious quality, and spiraling costs. These problems can be directly attributed to employment-based health insurance.”

And this four-party system can be directly attributed to government enabling legislation. The authors call the four-party system the “crown jewel” of enabling legislation.

Charles Kroncke, Medicaid, Medicare, Ronald F. White, The Independent Review, The Modern Health Care Maze, co-payments, deductibles, employment-based health insurance, four-party health care system, four-party payment system, insurance companies, insurance policies, pre-existing conditions, third-party payers