Buried on p.A12 on The New York Times:
Fearing that health insurance premiums may shoot up in the next few years, Senate Democrats laid a foundation on Tuesday for federal regulation of rates, four weeks after President Obama signed a law intended to rein in soaring health costs.
Here is a related recent piece on the expense of the mandate.
““Water and power are essential for life,† Mrs. Feinstein said. “So they are heavily regulated, and rate increases must be approved. Health insurance is also vital for life. It too should be strictly regulated so that people can afford this basic need.†”
Wow. There’s so many things wrong here, I don’t know where to begin.
Really? So Congress just found out that the prohibition barring health insurers from denying people with pre-existing conditions is going to push up rates across the board? I’m so happy that our representatives put so much thought into crafting such wide-sweeping legislation.
“our weeks after President Obama signed a law intended to rein in soaring health costs. ”
Even Obama himself surely doesn’t believe that, this was almost purely about extension of coverage and increasing total costs.
“but water hasn’t existed for most of human history?”
Filtered and pumped into your living space via pipes?
something tells me this bill was constructed while listening to, on repeat, mick jagger and david bowie’s version of Dancing In The Street.
Most people drink private bottled water and use municipal water for cleaning and toilets
I still don’t understand how the mandate would have a significant change in the long term increase of health insurance, only a temporary reduction, because I don;t see people opting out of insurance as significantly rising in percentage terms.. And now that insurers are forced to accept and treat all preexisting conditions, the more treatments that come about, the more insurance will have to increase. Does anyone know of anything in those thousands of pages that actually will affect long term health insurance increases?
Price controls will totally work this time.
Ass: Maybe if you live someplace with horrible water (ie, Central California, the desert Southwest).
Places with good tap water, people drink it just fine.
Could I get the consensus solution for those opposedto universal health care? I agree with most of the critiques of the Democratic plan, I just don’t know what the alternative approach entails.
I’m assuming letting people bleed is not considered acceptable.
“President Obama signed a law intended to rein in..”: how unusual; they’ve written “rein” when “reign” might be what they meant.
Don’t they more or less have to do it? If you are going to provide people with sufficient subsidies and require them to purchase health insurance – you basically have to regulate prices otherwise the insurance companies will just gauge the hell out of everyone (I don’t believe for a second “competition” would fix this. I’ll think you’ll have a “wink wink” oligopoly where ever insurance company else understands that its in every one of theirs best interest to gauge the government, even without direct communication). It’s not a nice scenario, but the way this is structured I think you have to do that otherwise this will either fail outright or just become an incredible fiscal burden.
We could all stand to learn something from the underpants gnomes.
Step 1: Collect Underpants
Step 2: ?
Step 3: Profit
“Could I get the consensus solution for those opposed to universal health care?”
I doubt it’s the consensus, but something like:
1. De-link health insurance by ending preferential tax treatment of employer-provided health insurance.
2. Expand use of HSAs and high-deductible catastrophic plans.
3. Provide subsidies to low-income and high-risk people to enable them to afford health insurance (e.g. health insurance will cost no more than ‘x’ percent of income, where ‘x’ is a higher percentage for people with higher-incomes or higher-wealth).
4. No mandate. But if people choose to go without coverage, they’ll have to exhaust their own resources before being allowed to buy subsidized coverage under #3.
delirious:
See http://mercatus.org/publication/simple-solutions-america-s-long-term-budgetary-challenges
See the medicare/medicaid section. Extrapolate as necessary.
I’m not a doctor, and it’s irritating to have to be. There doesn’t have to be an alternative to a bad idea. Wait for a better idea is always a perfectly good option. But anyway, what Slocum said plus go in the complete opposite direction on everything they have done.
For example, instead of requiring covering everything and then taxing people and creating…health panels because noone can afford to pay for everything, insurance should be as atomized as possible for different procedures.
Taking the water analogy further, may be in the end, we’ll have (1) a basic jealth insurance, like municipal tap water, (2) deluxe insurance, like supermarket bottled water, (3) premium health insurance, domestic brand-name bottled water, and (4) super duper, sky is the limit insurance, equivalent to Perrier.
Re: To begin, guaranteed issue is mandated, meaning higher risk entrants will join the risk pools
Most ailing people– the vast majority in fact– are already covered by health insurance. Generally through workplace policies (their own or a spouse’s) where guaranteed issue has been the case since 1996′s HIPAA law. How big will this effect be? How big was it when HIPAA went into effect?
Here folows what I sent to Scott Brown earlier this month:
To The Staff Member Reviewing this:
The brief summary of my credentials is included to avoid this being seen as an uninformed proposal for “Insurance Reforms:†
Though now retired at 85+ from active legal practice, my background includes over 50 years of experience in securiyies law, insurance finance & regulations, various forms of financial and regulatory compliance both domestic and foreign, taxation, domestic and international reinsurance, actuarial requirements and investment policies. That experience includes being a “founder† of one of today’s major domestic insurers.
The Proposal:
If there is to be any effective form of Federal regulation of, or intermediation in, any class of insurance, it must be totally “integrated,† and cannot be limited to any one function such as “Premium Rate Regulation,† “Profit Limitations,† or “Sales Across State Lines,† as currently provided by legislation and as proposed by the President and others.
Some years past, there were proposals to replace state regulation of insurance with a Federal system. If insurance business, or any class of it, has become such a definitive part of interstate commerce that it now merits some of the recent legislation included in proposals for dealing with “HealthCare,† then some of the former concepts of the past should be revisited.
Among those concepts:
Create a Federal Insurance Commission.
Any insurer could elect to be chartered and licensed exclusively Federally, or exclusively by the states, or by both.
Exclusively Federal insurers could operate in any state without state supervision, limitations or provisions for state-mandated policy benefits.
Federal charter and licensing legislation would follow the patterns of state regulations in matters of financial requirements and actuarial soundness of operations. All mandated policy benefit provisions would, by law, require actuarially (not politically) determined premiums, as is the case with state licensing and rate setting by the states.
In order to establish the broadest possible “Risk Pool,† consideration should be given to requiring all large-scale businesses that now “self-insure† rather than purchase contracted coverages for their employees to obtain a form of Federal license. That form of licensee (and certain other forms) might be allowed to elect exemption from Federally mandated benefits requirements.
Some form of Reinsurance Pool or Assigned Risk Pool (or both) should be established for transfers of the various classes of pre-existing condition risks (they do vary) and for lifetime benefits extensions, or for any other such extra-ordinary benefits (e.g., guaranteed issue, regardless of condition), transfers for dis-similar plans, etc. Funding of either of these pools might require spreading the costs of these benefits over the tax-payer base rather than over the premium payer base, at least in part. This is cost-spreading, not risk-spreading.
If there is inadequate Federal participation, then consideration could be given to the formation of a GSE insurer, under that same umbrella.
All the preceding is no more than a skeleton. Much will be learned in any structuring; and, if tried, there will be errors and many politically induced misadventures.
Please note that this relates to insurance only and not to “HealthCare Costs.† There seems to be some misconception or propaganda that rising premiums are a “cause† of HealthCare costs, rather than the obvious reverse. However, to the extent that those costs are to be delivered into the economy in large part via insurance premiums, insurance policies and their regulation will have specific effects on consumption of services.
Now, quite frankly, from experience, domestic and international, I am opposed to the implementation of any of the above proposal in the U.S. However, if there is to be Federal intrusion, this may just be the least damaging. There is no point in saying “do no harm,† but at least do as little harm as honest objectives allow.
R. Richard Schweitzer April 5, 2010
Shrewsbury, MA.
s24rrs@aol.com
I’m not sure what the big surprise is. From the article:
The White House offered a similar proposal in the weeks leading up to approval of the health care legislation last month. But it was omitted from the final measure, in part for procedural reasons.
The law just enacted is terrible. The only worse thing is doing nothing. Insurance rates have gone up so much since the failed attempt at health insurance reform in the 90′s, something has to be done. If you don’t support efforts at cost control (which must entail rationing supply), then just make insurance illegal. That will cut spending a lot. Market forces don’t work with health care.
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