Tag Archives: Insurance

The Impact Of Obamacare On Health Insurance Premiums

Posted on by

The chart below is from Investors.com. It shows what has happened to family health insurance premiums since 2008.

The article explains what has caused the rise in premiums:

First, the law piles on new coverage mandates. It requires insurance companies to provide 100% coverage for various types of preventive care, bans lifetime coverage limits, extends parents’ coverage to offspring up to 26 years old, and requires plans to meet certain “medical loss ratios.” Coming up are rules on “essential standard benefits,” limits on deductibles, bans on annual spending caps, and much more.

The experience with state mandates show that they only tend to grow over time, and get more expensive. The Council for Affordable Health Insurance found more than 2,200 state benefit mandates, which add from 10% to 50% to the cost of coverage.

“One of the biggest cost drivers in our health care system is the steady proliferation of federal and state-based coverage mandates,” noted CAHI’s Victoria Craig Bunce.

Meanwhile, ObamaCare‘s insurance reforms — guaranteed issue and community rating — will likely raise premiums, too.

Health insurance is a business. It needs to make a profit in order to stay in business. The question here is simple, “Is President Obama so ignorant of business practices that he does not understand that a business needs to make a profit in order to continue to exist or is President Obama purposefully moving healthcare out of the private sector and into the public sector?”

Public sector healthcare does not work well. There have been so many horror stories coming out of Britain about older people not receiving the proper treatment in the government health system and about all patients having to wait too long for appropriate treatment. If you love your grandmother, you need to elect people in November who will overturn Obamacare.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Political Whiplash

Posted on by

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air posted a story yesterday about one of the quickest position reversals in the history of American politics. Ever since Paul Ryan was chosen as the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate, we have been hearing about the plight of poor granny–destined to a future of inadequate vouchers to pay for care that she will not be able to afford. Oh, the horror of it all. Those evil vouchers. Well, not so fast.

President Obama promised, “And I will — I will never turn Medicare into a voucher.”

Hot Air reports:

But back in Washington, his Health and Human Services Department is launching a pilot program that would shift up to 2 million of the poorest and most-vulnerable seniors out of the federal Medicare program and into private health insurance plans overseen by the states.

The administration has accepted applications from 18 states to participate in the program, which would give states money to purchase managed-care plans for people who are either disabled or poor enough to qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid. HHS approved the first state plan, one for Massachusetts, last month.

Paul Ryan’s vouchers were optional, President Obama’s are required.

Ed Morrissey points out that the plan may actually be a good plan–similar to the Medicare Advantage plan that Obamacare eliminated. The problem is, however, that the choice is taken out of the hands of the American citizen–not something we should encourage our government to do.

The article ends with an update:

Update: A couple of commenters object to my description of this as a “voucher” program — but that’s how Democrats describe Ryan’s plan, and that doesn’t have “vouchers,” either.  It’s a premium-support plan in a federal exchange of insurance plans approved by Medicare for coverage.  That’s what Medicare Advantage did too, and Obama raided it to pay for the Medicaid expansion in ObamaCare.  This plan doesn’t even have the federal exchange that Ryan envisioned, but fifty different exchanges doling out federal dollars.  Like I wrote, the plan and the experiment is worth trying, but it’s precisely the kind of push into private insurance that Obama swore the day earlier he’d never do … and he’s doing it with the poorest seniors with only an opt-out in some states rather than the opt-in that Ryan’s plan provided.  I’ll put quote marks on “voucher” in the headline, but this mechanism only differs from Ryan’s in that the exchanges get managed by the states rather than Medicare.

No wonder people don’t trust politicians.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Sharing The Cost Of Obamacare

Posted on by

One of the threats I am hearing from Democrats to the American people is that if Mitt Romney is elected, your children under 26 will no longer have health insurance. There is no mention of the fact that the Republicans are not stupid, and if they repeal Obamacare, there are certain provisions of it that they will quickly implement. However, in making these charges, the Democrats do tend to overlook some basic facts.

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air reported yesterday that under Obamacare, the cost of health insurance for college students at the University of North Carolina will be increasing from $460 per semester to $709 per semester.

The article reports:

In part, this was caused by the claims experience of Chartis over the last couple of years, which discovered that students on this plan accessed care more often than they initially predicted.  A significant part of the increase, however, comes from the requirements of comprehensive insurance coverage that will exacerbate those trends rather than limit cost increases.

We saw a similar thing happen in Massachusetts with insurance rates for all residents of the state. You can’t mandate ‘one size fits all’ insurance coverage for everyone and expect the rates to stay the same. People need the right to decide how much coverage they want. Logically you should decide whether you want a policy that covers every doctor’s visit or one that simply covers specialists and hospital visits. Obamacare takes this right away from you (as did Massachusetts healthcare reform).

Now before you say that Romneycare equals Obamacare, let me explain a few things about Romneycare. Governor Romney had no choice but to go along with the idea of state health insurance–Massachusetts is a one-party state, and the legislature was going to pass healthcare reform. As Governor, Mitt Romney tried to temper the ‘let the government do everything’ philosophy’ of the state legislature, but was unsuccessful. The bill that eventually passed in Massachusetts had little or no resemblance to what the Governor originally proposed. Under Governor Patrick, it has gotten even worse. At some point in the future, it will probably be defunded and killed. As a result of Romneycare, insurance premiums are growing faster than in other states, waits to see a doctor are longer, patients do not always have the freedom to choose what hospital they would like to go to, and emergency waiting rooms lines are still incredibly long. Progress has not been made. This is what we will see nationally when Obamacare is fully implemented (oddly enough, after the election).

Enhanced by Zemanta

Keeping Your Doctor

Posted on by

Yesterday’s Wall Street Journal posted an article by Dan Henninger entitled, “ObamaCare‘s Lost Tribe: Doctors.” The article quotes the promise President Obama made to the American Medical Association’s annual meeting in 2009. The President stated, “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.”

Well, did anyone ask the doctors about this? Somehow lost in the discussions of the processing of healthcare claims, the demand that everyone must have health insurance, and the institutional representatives of hospitals, drug companies, and insurance companies, we have forgotten what healthcare actual boils down to–a relationship between a doctor and a patient.

The article in the Wall Street Journal reminds us:

A Wall Street Journal story the day after the Supreme Court ruling examined in detail its impact across the “health sector.” The words “doctor,” “physician” and “nurse” appeared nowhere in this report. The piece, however, did cite the view of one CEO who runs a chain of hospitals, explaining how they’d deal with the law’s expected $155 billion in compensation cuts. “We will make it up in volume,” he said.

Volume? Would that be another word for human beings? It is now. At Obama Memorial, docs won’t be treating patients. They’ll be processing “volume.” And then, with what time and energy remains in the day, they’ll be inputting medical data to comply with the law’s new Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS), lodged in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.

This may be good for the government, but it is not good for the patient. The article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal goes on to explain how the emphasis in Obamacare on volume will impact medical care in America. Healthcare needs to be reformed, but Obamacare is not the answer. 

Enhanced by Zemanta

As We Await The Supreme Court’s Decision On Obamacare…

Posted on by

CNS News posted a story on Friday about the impact of Obamacare on the cost of health insurance.

Edward Fensholt, senior vice president of Lockton Companies, LLC, an insurance brokerage and consulting firm that provides employee-benefits expertise to 2,500 mostly middle-market employers, told the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions:

“These mandates have increased our clients’ health plan costs 2 to 3 percent on average to this point,” he said. And he said the costs will escalate further when new rules — such as reductions in waiting periods and the automatic enrollment requirement — take effect in 2014.

Note that the new rules take effect long after the coming election.

The article reports:

Bill Streitberger, vice president of human resources for the Red Robin restaurant chain, told the panel that when health care costs increase, his company has less money to invest in opening new restaurants.

For the last three years, he noted, Red Robin’s health care costs per employee have increased more than six percent every year — a much greater pace than the growth of Red Robin’s sales or net income, he said.

There are some basic changes needed in America’s health insurance system–portability, tax breaks for buying health insurance, tort reform, etc. Obamacare never addresses tort reform. Obamacare takes away the free market and places the entire healthcare system under government control. That is a really bad idea, and hopefully the Supreme Court will strike down the entire bill so that the current Congress can try again.

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

What Happens If ObamaCare Is Overturned ?

Posted on by

Last week Investor’s Business Daily asked the question, “What happens if ObamaCare is overturned?” That is a very good question.

It would not be good for Congressional Democrat campaigns–the Democrats spent a year on this bill–were they wasting their time? But what impact would it have on the Presidential campaign? Are there parts of the bill that the public approves of that could be written into law between now and November? Is Congress capable of writing anything into law between now and November?

The article reports:

The KFF survey found that letting 26-year-olds stay on their parents’ policy polled well, with 71% viewing it either very or somewhat favorably. Also polling favorably was prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on a person’s medical history, 60%, and limiting what insurers can charge older people vs. the young, 52%.

The article then reminds us that these provisions could collapse the insurance market. The thing we need to remember here is that insurance companies are in business to make money. There is nothing immoral about that. If they are allowed to make money, they provide jobs and insurance for people. That’s a good thing. There does need to be some sort of allowance made for a high-risk pool similar to what is done with car insurance, and I would also support something that protects someone from being dropped because they have gotten sick and actually need their health insurance.

What is needed is a fresh start. Such things as insurance portability across state lines, tort reform, and tax breaks for consumers buying individual insurance would be a good beginning. I suspect, however, that any beginning will have to wait until after the November election.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Some Thoughts On The Supreme Court Debate On The Affordable Care Act This Week

Posted on by

Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post posted an article yesterday summing up her feelings about the Supreme Court debate this week.

Ms. Rubin wrote that Obamcare suffered a severability trainwreck at the Supreme Court. The argument for striking down the entire law if the individual mandate is found unconstitutional is that without the individual mandate to herd customers to insurance companies and provide financial support for the other provisions of the law, the goal of universal access would be thwarted. The individual mandate is the only way that Obamacare can provide insurance coverage for everyone. Because Obamacare goes against basic business principles (as well as the U. S. Constitution), it will not work.

The article reports:

It was that kind of day for the government. The argument today was another instance in which the challengers rolled up their sleeves, got into the text of the statute and made a convincing case. The government never sufficiently spelled out how the mandate could be severed from the rest of the bill without upsetting the intricate system of subsidies and the goal of expanded access. In hiding the ball from the public by virtue of an overly intricate fog of misdirection, and in disguising the essence of the scheme — healthy, young people who might not otherwise want insurance are compelled to buy it to ameliorate the costs of others — Congress sent the Supreme Court a legal knot that will be hard to undo.

Part of the arguments for Obamacare come from people who do not understand how insurance works. There does need to be some protection for people who develop serious medical problems so that their insurance companies cannot abandon them–however, we can use a fly swatter instead of a nuclear weapon to deal with this issue and still get the job done.

If the free market were allowed to operate in health insurance, we would be able to find our way out of any current insurance problems without doing things that will not work and are unconstitutional. A few basic suggestions–tort reform, portability of health insurance from one job to another, tax breaks to help people afford health insurance, selling health insurance across state lines. These ideas are all constitutional and might actually help solve the problem of the high cost of health insurance.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Two Very Good Articles On ObamaCare On The Internet Today

Posted on by

There are two very good articles on ObamaCare on the Internet today. The first was posted yesterday at Investors.com and the second is in today’s Wall Street Journal. The Supreme Court will begin arguing ObamaCare on Monday.

The Investors.com article points how ObamaCare will increase the cost of medical care and insurance for the people who are insured–not actually lower the cost for anyone.

The article reports:

…By 2019, roughly 16 million people out of the 50 million uninsured will be forced into coverage thanks to the individual mandate. Of those 16 million, some 6 million to 7 million will be covered for the first time by Medicaid and, to a lesser extent, the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Medicaid, however, provides very low reimbursement rates to participating doctors and hospitals — only 58% of those normally paid by insurance companies. Medicaid often doesn’t pay enough to cover a provider’s costs.

Under the government’s logic, hospitals and doctors will be forced to raise prices for the insured to cover their costs, which will be passed along as higher premiums. The total cost shift under Medicaid is substantially greater than for the uninsured who fail to pay their bills.

Moreover, the increased cost-shifting phenomenon used by the government to justify the individual mandate will only grow worse as Medicaid enrollment expands due to the mandate.

ObamaCare will totally ruin any part of the medical insurance and patient care system that currently works.

The Wall Street Journal article is entitled, “Liberty and ObamaCare.” It deals with the constitutional question of the individual mandate. The article also gives some insight on how the Obama Administration will argue the case:

Consider a White House strategy memo that leaked this month, revealing that senior Administration officials are coordinating with liberal advocacy groups to pressure the Court. “Frame the Supreme Court oral arguments in terms of real people and real benefits that would be lost if the law were overturned,” the memo notes, rather than “the individual responsibility piece of the law and the legal precedence [sic].” Those nonpolitical details are merely what “lawyers will be talking about.”

Does anyone remember the old lawyers’ joke, “If the law is on your side, pound the law; if the evidence is on your side, pound the evidence; if neither is on your side, pound the table.” It sounds as if the Obama Administration plans to pound the table.

Talk radio host Hugh Hewitt (a law professor and practicing lawyer) has promised to highlight the arguments on his radio show (6 pm to 9 pm East Coast Time). I am looking forward to what he has to say.

 

Enhanced by Zemanta

Why We Don’t Need Obamacare

Posted on by

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal posted an article detailing how much healthcare costs have risen in America during the decade of 2000 to 2010.

The article reports:

New data show that health spending over the past several years has been normalizing toward the rate of general inflation, rather than growing higher and higher, as had been the case almost continuously since the 1970s. This moderation in the growth rate of spending predates the national recession. And it puts the lie to the claim that we need government to put the brakes on an “out-of-control” health-care system.

As the graph nearby shows, the growth rate of national health expenditures, according to data compiled by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has been moderating since 2002.

[Kleinke]

The chart shows that all of the hype about runaway healthcare costs was simply political hype.

J. D. Kleinke, who wrote the article, has the solution for fixing healthcare in America:

But we know that this slow, steady moderation in health-care spending is good news. True, it is not fast enough. But the decade-long trendline shows the way toward good policy for the future. If we really want to tame the health-care cost beast and make insurance “affordable,” we would double down on all of the positive developments.

We would liberate people with their own money from layer upon layer of arcane, localized insurance rules. We would fix the tax code to uncouple health insurance from employment and let people purchase their own mix of services and coverage. And we would let them do so in a competitive, national market just like with auto insurance—instead of holding them hostage in fragmented, local markets while shaking down their employers to subsidize a system that wants desperately to change itself.

The bottom line here is simple–people do a better job of spending their own money than the government does. Taking the government bureaucracy out of healthcare will make it more available and less expensive for everyone.

Enhanced by Zemanta

Hard Questions And Weasel Words

Posted on by

I apologize for the length of this post, but I think the information here is important.

I watched Chris Wallace interview Jack Lew this morning on Fox News Sunday. I am posting a few quotes from the transcript. Questions were never answered directly, there was nothing but talking points, but please note where Mr. Lew says the government gets the authority to tell a company what they must sell and a consumer what he must buy. There is no way that can be constitutional. Here are some quotes:

WALLACE: Before we get to the president’s new budget and I promise we will, I want to clear up some lingering question about the president’s revised policy about providing health insurance coverage for birth control to the employees of religious institutions. The president now says that Catholic institutions don’t have to provide the coverage but the insurance companies do.

The question — where does the president get the power to tell a private company they have to offer a product and offer it for free?

LEW: Well, Chris, just to be clear — the president has the authority under the Affordable Care Act to have these kinds of rules take affect. And the issue with this being for free is quite an interesting one. If you look at the cost of providing health insurance, it actually doesn’t cost more to provide a plan with contraceptive coverage than it does without.

The discussion then continued as Mr. Wallace asked how the insurance companies could offer the coverage for free. What is not said directly is that it is cheaper to prevent a child from being born than to provide healthcare for that child. Have we reached the point as a society where that is a consideration?

The discussion continued:

WALLACE: But here’s my point and here’s the concern that some religious institutions have. The reason that you’re going to get these, quote, “savings” is because of avoided pregnancies from artificial birth control, which is the practice that these religious institutions find objectionable and, in fact, sinful in the first place.

LEW: But let’s just be clear: every woman has a right to access all forms of preventive health, including contraception. Religious institutions, churches, are not covered by this. So, they don’t have to provide.

Note that he is saying that every woman has a right to contraception. He is requiring church charities to allow their employees to take part in something that is against their doctrine and saying it is okay since they are not paying for it.

The discussion continued:

WALLACE: You say it’s consistent. The Catholic bishops are clearly not satisfied with it — if I may, sir. They have issued a statement that says that they view the decision by the president, the revision, with grave moral concern.

Let’s put up their statement on the screen.

“Today’s proposal involves needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion — government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions.”

And, sir, they call on Congress to block the president’s policy.

LEW: No, I think the president’s policy does not do that. It does not force an institution that has religious principle to offer or may for benefits they find objectionable. But it guarantees a woman’s right to access. We think that’s the right solution.

There are others who opposed women’s access to contraception. They have different views than we do. I’m not going to speak to the motives of any of the parties. But it’s quite significant that a range of Catholic organizations has embraced this.

We didn’t expect to get universal support of the bishops or all Catholics. I think that what we have here is a policy that reflects bringing together two very important principles in a way that’s true to the American tradition. And that’s what the president is trying to do.

There are others who want to have a clash over it. We want to bring these two principles together

He is admitting that the Obama Administration did not expect the Bishops to go along with the supposed compromise. The birth control controversy is a small taste of surprises to come from the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Based on Mr. Lew’s statement, the act pretty much allows the government to do anything it wants to in regard to providing healthcare to Americans–whether it is constitutional or not!

 
Enhanced by Zemanta

It’s All Smoke And Mirrors

Posted on by

Katie Pavlich at Townhall.com posted an article this morning about the Obama Administration’s non-compromise on the latest healthcare directive from Health and Human Services. Yes, I said non-compromise.

The Obama Administration’s definition of a compromise is to still require religious institutions to provide insurance covereage for procedures that violate their religious principles.

The article reports:

…a “compromise” that allows religious employers to opt out of paying for providing birth control to women, but will still be required to provide contraception. What this means is, insurance companies will pick up the tab for contraception, but religious employers are still required to provide contraception through insurance plans to their employees, despite the move being against religious beliefs.

This is all smoke and mirrors. Under the compromise, religious institutions are still required to ignore their basic beliefs and provide coverage, they just don’t have to pay for it. That is not a compromise. Also, why is the federal government requiring a religious organization to ignore their religious beliefs in order to comply with any law?

Enhanced by Zemanta

More Unintended Consequences Of Obamacare

Posted on by

Today’s New York Daily News posted an article on “The unaffordable Affordable Care Act.” The Daily News cites research by the nonprofit group The Kaiser Family Foundation which shows:

“…premiums have risen steeply under the law – with the annual premium for family coverage through an employer reaching $15,073 in 2011, an increase of 9% over the previous year. Or as Politico put it: Premiums are now costing families as much as a new car.”

The article points out that some aspects of Obamacare have already taken effect, but that the supposed ‘cost cutting’ aspects of the bill will not go into effect until 2014. Some of the parts of the bill already in effect include covering kids 26 years old and under, accepting patients with no preconditions and eliminating annual caps. All of these things logically drive up the cost for insurance companies, an increase that they logically pass on to their customers.

The 9% increase is not a random number. The Daily News reports:

Back in May, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a final rule that would allow the administration to “establish procedures for federal and state insurance experts to scrutinize premiums” starting in September of this year. Managed care companies were told they would have to justify any rate increases above 10%. Translation: They’d be put on the political hot seat.

Why are health insurance premiums going up? Anticipation of what is to come under the new law. The article reports:

Insurers pushed up costs, not only to cover anticipating an influx of new and possibly sick patience (and lack of revenue from healthy patients signing up), but also to avoid getting audited by the Obama administration before the review period kicks in.

Obamacare needs to be repealed. But it needs to be replaced with something that includes tort reform, portability across state lines, and takes the government out of the equation.

Enhanced by Zemanta