Janet Trautwein is Executive Vice President and CEO of the National Association of Health Underwriters in Arlington, Virginia. The National Association of Health Underwriters represents more than 20,000 professionals involved in the sale and service of health insurance and related products. Her responsibilities include oversight of all NAHU activities and primary representation of the association to the media, government agencies and elected officials at all levels, the insurance industry, and the public. Prior to becoming the CEO of NAHU, Janet served for many years as the head of NAHU's government affairs department, working with members of Congress on Capitol Hill and agencies of the Executive branch, supervising NAHU government affairs staff, monitoring and analyzing legislation, writing and revising legislation and developing policy recommendations for NAHU. She has a particular interest and expertise in issues related to the uninsured, long-term care, high-risk pools and health insurance markets around the United States.
There is widespread agreement among health experts that much of the health care delivered in America today lacks a basis in evidence, which is contributing to wide variations in practice patterns across the country. The end result is that patients may well be paying more for sub-optimal care. Obtaining and making widely accessible objective information on best medical practices and protocols through comparative effectiveness research is imperative to improving the quality of health care and the affordability of insurance coverage. It can help better inform and educate providers and patients and produce better health outcomes. The absence of good evidence… Read more
There is no question that health reform will be an expensive proposition. Making the best use of available funds will be critical to its success. However, a public program option for coverage will require an expensive new bureaucracy that will be unnecessary to improve access in light of the industry proposed market reforms. Regardless of the funding source, it will be important to use funds where they are most needed and not use them for structures and services which duplicate existing components. A better use of funds would be to support the subsidies that that will be needed to help low-income individuals purchase private… Read more
Our health care system and the consumers who depend on it are facing an unprecedented crisis of rising health care costs that drive up the cost of health insurance. This unsustainable trend demands that policy makers find real solutions that will help Americans have access to high quality affordable health care and health insurance to finance that care. Some of the public policy components that NAHU feels would help ensure lower health care costs, improve quality, create greater efficiency and provide better access to care include: Medical cost and quality transparency. Medical care is perhaps the only service American consumers regularly purchase without having any… Read more
NAHU firmly believes that any SCHIP reauthorization legislation should contain improvements to SCHIP’s premium assistance options. Legislation in both the House and Senate would remove many of the existing premium assistance barriers in order to maximize SCHIP dollars and enhance beneficiary care and access through better integration with existing employer-sponsored health insurance coverage. Both bills take specific steps to improve the premium assistance process for states to voluntarily use SCHIP dollars to subsidize and leverage employer-sponsored coverage so that more families can be covered together at lower costs to federal and state governments. Although NAHU would like to see additional steps taken… Read more
NAHU does not support extending the duration of COBRA benefits beyond the statutory 18 or 36 months. In our view, any subsidies for COBRA premiums should be temporary in nature. Individuals who elect COBRA typically anticipate a need for their health benefits and employer plans report that COBRA participants actually cost the employer as much as 150% more than the average plan participant due to adverse selection. We need to help individuals in these worst of times, but we also must limit the financial impact of COBRA participants on extremely hard-pressed employers and employer-sponsored health plans. NAHU supports temporary federal… Read more
Related Link: http://www.nahu.org
