Archive | 8:20 AM

It’s Insurance, really

7 Oct

As is my habit I just finished reading the morning paper and as has become a new habit I read an editorial once again blaming health care woes on insurance company abuses and discriminatory practices. Don’t get me wrong, I have no doubt there are some overzealous claim folks who wrongly deny claims or who stretch the underwriting rules to deny coverage. There are dumb people who play games in every business (even government). On one hand we may have wrongly placed incentives and on the other it’s called PACs.

However, the constant barrage of criticism of insurance companies is no more than a ploy to rile the population.

Insurance companies don’t cause health care costs to rise. If anything they may be too agressive at times trying to control those costs.

Our politicians and their supporters miss a vital point. It’s health INSURANCE. Just like homeowners and auto INSURANCE. If you kill all the rules of underwriting as may be necessary, you better have alternatives to manage the increased costs that are inevitable. Why do our politicians think Medicare imposes a premium penalty on those who delay enrollment in that coverage?

Over the top with bad ideas

7 Oct

Now we are heading into the valley of crazy. The latest idea in health care reform is to effectively place the public option in the hands of the 50 states each to run it’s own plan or in combination with others. Just what we need, more fragmentation in the hands of hundred of politicians across the country. This when one of the problems with our current system is the various insurance commissions and the hundreds of mandates from states that increase costs.

Then to take it one step further there is also the idea of opening state run employee health benefit plans to the general public. You heard right, let the pubic enroll in the health benefits for state workers.

I am a commissioner for a state health benefits plan and let me tell you, THIS IS NOT A GOOD IDEA. In fact, it is about the worst idea to come down the pike since health care reform was a distant concept.

The inmates have gained control of the asylum.

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