{"id":341578,"date":"2010-02-19T21:13:59","date_gmt":"2010-02-20T02:13:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.szone.us\/f95\/taste-health-care-reform-39736\/"},"modified":"2010-02-19T21:13:59","modified_gmt":"2010-02-20T02:13:59","slug":"a-taste-of-health-care-reform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/341578","title":{"rendered":"A Taste of Health Care Reform"},"content":{"rendered":"
On 02.19.10 11:11 AM posted by Robert Book, Ph.D.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Anthem Blue Cross, the California subsidiary of Wellpoint, one of the nation\u0092s largest health insurers, recently announced steep premium increases for its individual (i.e., not employment-based) insurance customers.* The political response to these premium increases \u0096 of up to 39% for almost 700,000 customers \u0096 was swift and blunt.* Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius ordered a federal investigation into how Anthem could \u0093justify\u0094 the increases, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) scheduled a hearing, MoveOn.org launched a petition drive, and President Obama himself jumped at the opportunity<\/a> to claim this as justification for the Democrat health reform effort, calling it \u0093a portrait of the future if we don’t do something now.\u0094*Today, HHS released a report<\/a> citing similar premium increases in several other states.<\/p>\n

On the contrary \u0096 it\u0092s a portrait of the future for the entire United States if either the House or Senate Democrats\u0092 health bill becomes law.* The Wall Street Journal points out<\/a> that while Wellpoint as a whole is profitable, it has been losing money in this particular market, and*these steep premium increases are the direct result of California\u0092s state insurance regulations.* Regulations require that insurance companies offer individual \u0093conversion policies\u0094 to former employees who have exhausted<\/a> their COBRA continuation coverage rights.*This may be a good idea in principle, but California takes it a step further<\/a> and sets the premiums to be charged for such coverage by statute.**And, since those electing to take advantage of this option are disproportionately those with higher than average health care costs (often due to pre-existing conditions), the statutory rates aren\u0092t sufficient to cover the costs of providing care for those patients.* To stay in business \u0096 and indeed, to meet financial solvency regulations also imposed by the state \u0096 insurance companies have to get the money someplace, and the only place left is to increase premiums for customers not covered by the statute. Essentially, several of California\u0092s regulations have combined to, in effect, require<\/i> these steep premium increases.<\/p>\n

California\u0092s regulations are much less<\/i> extreme versions of the regulations imposed by both the Democrat health care reform bills \u0096 the one that passed the House on November 7 and the one that passed the Senate on December 24.* The House bill would direct a newly-created bureaucracy<\/a> to determine what services insurance must cover, and directs that the Commissioner of that bureaucracy \u0093shall deny excessive premiums or premium increases,\u0094 without defining \u0093excessive\u0094 and in particular, without regard to whether premiums not deemed \u0093excessive\u0094 are enough to allow insurers to pay for the required benefits.*The Senate bill would also direct bureaucracy to determine what services insurance must cover, but would impose a complicated system of taxes and \u0093medical loss ratio\u0094 requirements<\/a> that could combine to force insurance plans to pay out more in taxes and claims than they take in in premiums.<\/p>\n

Both bills would also require insurers to sell health plans to all comers at prices fixed without regard to their health history.* Therefore, healthy people would have an incentive to forego insurance and pay the tax penalty \u0096 which would be less than the price of the health plan \u0096 knowing they could enroll in a health plan whenever they \u0093need\u0094 it.* The result would be that almost everyone in the insurance pool would have substantial health care needs, spreading the cost of health care over a much smaller insured population.* That would produce very steep premium increases nationwide \u0096 no doubt much higher than the increases Anthem Blue Cross has been forced to impose in California.<\/p>\n

The recent premium increases in California may indeed be it \u0093a portrait of the future\u0094\u0097a scaled-down portrait of the future under Obamacare.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/blog.heritage.org\/2010\/02\/19\/…h-care-reform\/<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 02.19.10 11:11 AM posted by Robert Book, Ph.D. Anthem Blue Cross, the California subsidiary of Wellpoint, one of the nation\u0092s largest health insurers, recently announced steep premium increases for its individual (i.e., not employment-based) insurance customers.* The political response to these premium increases \u0096 of up to 39% for almost 700,000 customers \u0096 was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-341578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=341578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/341578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=341578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=341578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=341578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}