A New and Better (But Still Flawed) Insurance Industry Report

Kate, thanks for this update. Your 4th paragraph “ins. industry wants a strong ind. mandate” quote should be in bold text, not parentheses. Pardon my doubts about a large insurance group analyzing its own, but what's in it for Blue Cross? How much $ in est. earnings will they gain from mandated new customers? Given Maine's Dirigo mess (as KT earlier covered well), I understand the need for mandates but think they can achieved without huge fines (have posted an earlier idea often). Pardon my asking many unusual questions (as KT, Jay, and Amy painfully know, I ask many unanswered questions that feed crickets). Unanswered q's aside, thanks for stating the blinding obvious, “The health insurance industry has an agenda here.”

Those facts aren't necessarily true, though. They're just facts written into a bad bill that the insurance industry has had way too much influence on.

For one thing, you don't allow people who can't afford insurance to opt out, you just subsidize their purchase of coverage. Do that and no problem.

Setting minimum standards wouldn't necssarily drive up the costs if you... ta da... regulate insurance premiums the way we regulate utilities rates. That's not in the bill but it's totally doable and it would be in the bill if we weren't being influenced by so many BS industry funded studies done by outfits like PWC and Oliver Wyman (the very consultancies who have contributed, by the way, to some of American capitalism's most spectacular flame-outs).

The issue about the young overpaying is also easily handled by premium regulation. But the other problem is... it's not really the young overpaying. Young people get old. I have renter's insurance for my apartment. Every day that my place isn't firebombed or robbed I pay for no benefit. Am I overpaying? Might seem so now, but it might look like a bargain if I ever need to make a claim. Those premiums you pay in your 20s could well pay off when you're in your 60s.

Except that there's a dirty secret about health care -- when people get older and need more care they get shunted into... a public option called Medicare! So in that sense everyone under 65 who doesn't make a major insurance claim is getting screwed and when they get older and are more likely to need help it's the government that pays.

The bottom line here is that health insurance rates are spinning wildly out of control even if nothing changes. If I recall correctly, the report had said costs would increase 111% over ten years if the bill passes, and 78% if it doesn't. Insurance rate hikes far beyond inflation rates is simply unacceptable regardless of what happens.
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If we're going to be paying more either way, I would rather us actually get more vis-a-vis public option, universal coverage, etc.

So what you're saying is this is another insurance industry report that makes the case for strong reform.

Look, it's not news that a universal mandate is critical. Academic economists studying health care have said so for a long time.

But, of course, who can trust them? They mostly believe a public option would reduce costs.

Have you tried doing any research into anlysis written by people who weren't funded by the health industry? Just think --real reporting! What fun!

some hard truths pro-reformers have not been eager to advertise: Allowing people who can't afford it to opt out of insurance coverage would be bad for everyone else. Setting minimum levels of benefits, which reform proposals would do, means the cheapest insurance available under a reformed system would be more expensive that the cheapest available now. (Of course, the cheapest insurance available now leaves many Americans dangerously under-insured.) And young adults buying individual insurance policies would pay a little more than their fair share to help keep costs down for older adults.
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This paragraph overall is a nice realistic assessment of where things stand except for the bolded phrase which is grossly misleading.
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The entire theory behind medical insurance existing is that the healthy subsidize the sick. If that weren't the case there would be no value in insurance in the first place. Everyone could keep a savings account for the money they'll need when they succumb. What insurance offers, is the opportunity for someone who gets sick unexpectedly to draw out of the pool before they've paid in fully. Insurers guarantee themselves that they collect more in premiums than they pay in benefits and pocket the difference in administrative costs and profits. Obviously the notion of a 'fair share' is under a system where the healthy already pay in more than enough to cover the sick AND the overhead is absurd on its face. Yes the young pay more than their fair share. That's the whole point of insurance. Mandates don't change that one iota.

[...] lose more and will more fiercely protect its own interests … Go here to read the rest:  A New and Better (But Still Flawed) Insurance Industry Report …SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "A New and Better (But Still Flawed) Insurance Industry Report …", [...]

“The entire theory behind medical insurance existing is that the healthy subsidize the sick.”
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In “big picture” view, I always saw insurance as a big bet, like an option or casino. Accidents happen, so we bet against ins. cos. over these. We bet they will happen (even when not desired) and the ins. cos. must pay; they bet they will NOT happen or be delayed (life / death ins.), and WE must pay. (Peter Bernstein said “Against the Gods” that if insurance policies were securities traded / sold on a market they'd be priced like options.) “Death bonds” / viaticals are interesting if macabre since the scenarios are reversed: we cash in life insurance to live long and prosper; the viatical cos. pay out and literally want us to die ASAP to maximize profit. Now that's capitalism.
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_31/b4044001.htm

The finance committee bill is nothing more then drivel. But you get what someone pays for.

I have absolutely no hope that Harry Reid will do a good job combining the Senate bills to something passable. One can only hope that the house does a better job at it.

I admit I'm nervous about this. My family falls into the bracket that might get hurt more than helped. We're in our late 30s, one child, healthy. I'm a sole proprietor, so I'm locked out of group rates. My wife works at a non-profit that can't afford to provide healthcare. We currently have the "hit by the bus" policy with a crazy-high deductible ($15k per individual, or $30K per family), and it still costs us $400 a month. We can't easily pay much more.
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If the bill that passes mandates that we instead buy a much more robust policy, our monthly bills will surely go up, and probably by a lot. I can only hope that whatever passes will allow us to purchase something in the same range as we pay now. I'll be very interested to see if the co-op idea takes hold. While it didn't work well in Maine (for probably many reasons), the leverage of a nationwide pool just might do the trick.

The longer this goes on the stronger I believe that the only real solution is single payer.

I think the difficulty is the same as implementing a flat tax. If the completely change the system, it would put many people and companies out of work. A single payer system would eliminate the majority of the insurance companies that are out there and the millions of good hard working people who work for them would now be jobless and have to have the universal healthcare coverage paid by additional tax dollars that are not being collected because millions are now unemployeed.....see the circle?

my opinion is that we need to focus on what brings the costs of health insurance up? Some people say it is health insurance profits, others say the profits are slim...so what else brings up the cost? Well, actually getting sick and getting healthcare. Why do we not focus on how to keep the population healthy? or focus on how to lower the cost of care? If we lower the cost of care, we can lower the cost of insurance....another circle, just a different way of looking at the issue.

And the CBO's numbers are sacrosanct?

"This is a valid point - one of the tenets of Democratic health reform plans is that young, healthy enrollees in the individual insurance market would subsidize coverage for older, sicker adults."
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So let's penalize a group of people, just starting out (and those people will have to be working, as you cannot get blood from a stone) who have college loans and may be looking to start a family, for the benefit of older people who have had time to accumulate assets etc.
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Wow. Why doesn't anyone ask about the morality of that?

Ooh, scare me again. So we have a new & better report by the insurance industry saying the insurance industry is going to raise your premiums. Is this supposed to win us over to their side?

The Constant Weader at http://www.RealityChex.com

[...] Cross Blue Shield report argues that premiums would rise for individuals under reform plans, but TIME reports, it "is carefully written, includes necessary caveats and considers some key pieces of [...]

[...] was released by the insurance industry in mid-October. The industry’s study claimed that plans for a public option would increase insurance premiums for the typical family by thousands of d.... However, Democrats panned the study as significantly flawed, a hatchet job, and an effort to [...]