It is frightening to me how little people know about their health insurance, what their rights are within the state they live and what is available for them if they fall through the cracks.
For all who hate the insurance industry, you all are entitled to your feelings. Try working within the system for even 5 minutes and much would be clearer to those who believe all insurance companies are evil and they never pay for anything.
What is about to happen is the bill is going to come due for expanded coverage PPACA mandated. There is simply no way that coverage can be expanded and there not be an additional cost for insurance. Those are diverging curves and it will all be laid at the feet of the evil insurance industry. I have had to deal with this when HIPAA came about and costs went up an average of 50% in a two year period. That is going to happen again with PPACA. Not saying it is right or wrong just saying it is going to happen.
The entire system needs to reformed but I think a couple of things to remember; For those wanting the government to run it, they already pay 50% of all medical costs incurred in this country. Roughly $1.25 Trillion last year. Medicare is the single largest threat to our ability to ever have anything resembling a balanced budget. We can take back all the tax breaks handed since 2000 and it will not come close to the future liabilities of medicare as the baby boomers age. Every government ran health care program: Medicaid, Medicare, TriCare, IHS, SCHIP, etc all have major structural flaws and they are all having major budget shortfalls.
As for forming insurance across state lines, I disagree that it is just an insurance industry issue. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners also strong opposed allowing this for a couple of reasons. First and foremost whose laws apply? If a Montana resident bought a policy in Alabama and had a complaint for not covering something who do they complain to? Who law applies in this case. The NAIC does not want to lose their consumer protection function any further than they already have.
Pooling is great but once a pool get to a point of being credible they still get increases because the underlying costs of services is increasing at about 15% a year. If the pool decides they are smarter than the market and do not pass on a required increase then they end up like the school districts last year and are facing up to an 81% increase in premiums.
Covering sick people and sick children is the right thing to do. If we are going to not have a single payer, cradle to grave system then we need some way to require people to participate and end the free rider problem. Whether that is an individual mandate or not there needs to a way to have everyone paying in and insuring coverage for everyone.
So whether one believe PPACA is the answer or think it is not constitutional, the fact remains that we cannot expend 17% of our GDP on health care and compete in a world where other countries are spending 8%. The system needed reformed but I have very grave doubts that PPACA will do anything to lower the growth in the cost of healthcare and I know for a fact it will do zero to reduce what premiums are.
Nemont
that's going on.
