ARM Professionals Look For Cost Containment in Health Care Reform

As health care reform advances on Capitol Hill with the approval Tuesday of a Senate Finance Committee bill, account receivables management professionals are weighing in on what they would like to see happen.

ACA International told insideARM that the top message it is receiving from its members is that they want lawmakers to focus on containing health care costs. But they also would like to see a system emerge that allows small businesses to aggregate their resources to get better health care coverage and lower premiums.

“Our members would like to see (a system) where they can pool their resources to gather the purchasing power of larger companies,” said Adam Peterman, ACA International’s government affairs director.

Peterman said ACA International has supported health care cost containment consistently for at least two years, but the association leaves major lobbying on those issues to organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business.  Peterman said ACA has to focus more on issues that directly impact the industry’s business outlook and client base.

“As a more focused association, we need to pick and choose how many messages we have and what they should be,” Peterman said, adding that ACA’s immediate concern is how the proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency would impact the industry.

According to a 2008 benchmarking study by ACA International, the employee health insurance expenses of debt collection agencies ranged from 2.4 percent to 4.6 percent of an agency’s gross annual revenue.  Those costs do not include employee contributions.

Early results from an insideARM’s quarterly Credit & Debt Collection Industry Confidence Survey shows that ARM professionals’ top three preferences are as varied as the health care debate. It was the first time the survey asked a specific question about health care reform.

Forty percent of the survey’s respondents so far favor minor changes to the system that focus on cost containment – ostensibly a plan that would gain Republican support — while just 17 percent of respondents want a plan that includes coverage mandates and a public option, the current plan being championed by President Obama.  Another 14 percent think the system is fine the way it is.

When given an opportunity to comment on a viable “Other” solution, the most common comment from survey participants so far focuses on tort reform and allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines.

The bill approved Tuesday by the Senate Finance Committee would make it easier for families and small businesses to buy health insurance and bar health insurers from discriminating against people with preexisting conditions or imposing coverage caps. Supporters of the bill also say it would ensure Americans can choose to keep the health care coverage they have if they like it and slow the growth of health care costs over time.

Senator Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) broke party ranks to vote with Democrats in approving the bill that does not include a public plan option or require employers to provide coverage for their workers. But Snowe, who indicated she may not support the final version of the bill, said she still favors allowing a government plan option to be implemented in regions where health care remains unaffordable.

Meanwhile, the American Health Insurance Plans is doing what it can to slow momentum of the bill’s passage in its current form, saying America’s Healthy Future Act does not go far enough to get more people to buy health care insurance. AHIP also claims that a survey it commissioned from PricewaterhouseCoopers found that provisions in the bill will increase the cost of private health care insurance sooner than under the current health care system.

“While we agree with the objective of the current proposal, we are concerned about its workability and cost.  The bill imposes hundreds of billions of dollars in new health care taxes and provides an incentive for people to wait until they are sick to purchase coverage,” (AHIP) President and CEO Karen Ignagni said in a statement.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers survey, however, has come under attack for ignoring provisions in the senate bill that seek to control health costs and protect against premium increases.  The consulting firm has issued a statement admitting it wasn’t paid to evaluate the effects of the entire bill.