Health insurance rates are increasing by leaps and bounds. Our employer-provided plan increased our premium 18% last year, and 24% this year with no significant change in coverage. Individual plans are seeing even higher increases, notwithstanding Obama's rhetoric in 2008 that "if we do not pass this reform bill then insurance rates will keep increasing," and his promises that "health care reform" would "cut the cost of health care."
Blue Shield is seeking a rate increase of 35% for individual policies due, they say, to "increased medical costs, sicker policyholders and healthier people dropping coverage because of the economy." The requirement for all individuals to carry health insurance does not come into play for several years, but requirements for insurance companies to cover sicker individuals are in force now.
No one could have foreseen that delaying the "individual mandate" for several years while immediately requiring coverage of additional sick people would cause insurance companies to raise premiums.
Because the people that put this into place are idiots.
ReplyDeleteThe same ones that put into place banking rules, but delayed them for several months. Voila! The banks raised fees, dropped limits and cut accounts. Gee, who'd a known?
And.... they pat themselves on the back for it. And ask for votes.
The irony is that the individual mandate was developed by the Heritage Foundation(a conservative think tank) back in 1990 as part of a George I health care proposition and then, of course, enacted under the Massachusetts's plan. If that portion of the Health Care Bill should be ruled unconstitutional, the health insurers (who fought hard for the mandate because it would bring them so much money that they were even willing to accept higher taxes on themselves) will be in a major bind because they will have to insure many more people but without all the new younger folks who would have been required to purchase insurance and help compensate for the older, mandated coverage. The best solution would be to extend Medicare to everyone, but that remains unlikely.
ReplyDeleteRef: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/1990/07/Using-Tax-Credits-to-Create-an-Affordable-Health-System