Pass a Law Allowing Competition Across State Lines to Drive Insurance Costs Down

[Historymaven]

Insurance companies are hoping their Congressional lackey serfs aren't savvy enough to enact this simple legislation. Once enacted to survive the fat cat insurance companies would have to compete or lose their business. Simple legislation would create an avalanche of creative solutions for the most enterprising companies, perhaps new entrants, to re-earn the 1/5th of our entire economy on which the insurance companies now have sliced into non-competitive inefficient state markets. Costs will plummet as the new market unfolds.

Unleash the power of the free market....This big idea will pay huge dividends for the American people.

Where is President Trump? He campaigned on this idea.

Historymaven

 

[anotherlife]

This is not new, obama's republican opponent proposed it in 2008, I forgot his name.

The result was predicted to be a national insurance consolidation, with only one or two insurers left, all moved to Delaware or North Dakota, where there are no taxes.

There is merit in speculation, whether new insurance start ups will start after the entire nation is in the hand of a single private insurance carrier. Also whether it is better to socialize / nationalize this resulting single private carrier, instead of trying to do the same with a version of obamacare.

I think trump care is currently weighing these options.

 

[Fenton Lum]

Funny thing about "competition" in our "capitalist" system; no one in it wants any and works to eliminate it via legislation and lobbying.

 

[anotherlife]

Funny thing about "competition" in our "capitalist" system; no one in it wants any and works to eliminate it via legislation and lobbying.

Stop frying the brain of American electorate.

 

[Care4all]

Each State controls the insurance rules and regs for their State...Each State has their own Insurance Commissioner.

Absolutely any Insurance company can operate in any state they want, as long as they meet the States rules and regs....

THEY ARE ALREADY ABLE to cross State lines.

Also, how does this cheapen policies? You can't force States to offer plans in other states that they do not want to meet the rules and regs, in order to operate in them?

And the Insurance model of operation, is going to hospitals and negotiating prices with them, BASED ON how many patients they will bring to them with their insurance policies....and they develop an "In Network" plan and price.

If an insurance company operates in Arizona, and I live in Maine, and I like the price of the Arizona policy and coverage....How would that be possible if I am the only person in Maine that would want that policy? How would the Insurance company be able to negotiate a better price for me in a State where they have a Patient of 1? How would they create a network of Doctors I can see? How could the price of the plan stay the same as the plan in Arizona that I liked in a State like mine where Hospitals and Doctor prices are through the roof?

The whole thing makes no sense...UNLESS the Insurance companies decide to operate in my state, which they can do right now, but choose not to????

 

[EverCurious]

It's the peeps that need to have the right to shop states not really the insurance companies IMO

 

[theDoctorisIn]

It's the peeps that need to have the right to shop states not really the insurance companies IMO

I live in California. Let's say I were to buy a policy from, say, Empire BCBS in New York.

Now, most of the hospitals and doctors that Empire BCBS has relationships with (their network) are in New York. So, here in California, I'd have to pay out of network prices for every medical expense.

How would that work, exactly?

 

[EverCurious]

Not exactly my field, but as I understand it and the history, way back when employers started offering insurance as a benefit perk to get workers (before it was even remotely a fucking entitlement) the insurance companies would pay the hospital/doctor whatever. It wasn't a big deal until the gov (fed and state) started gouging into medical profits and then insurance profits that the insurance companies started to have to limit where they were wanting to cover medical costs, or to run their business out of. The system got a bit hosed with Medicare/Medicade, then just went down hill in a hurry (as far as the insurance companies variances.) The problem over all was inconsistency. Like one state has x min wage - which drives up the pay of nurses and doctors. Another state will tax like hospital supplies or dry cleaning or bleach. All of that nettling adds up until you have a massive web of differences across state lines (on both the expense and the revenue side which makes it almost impossible for an insurance company to balance shit out between the premiums coming in and the expenses going out.)

As I understand it there is also differences between what is available private and the markets which are state run, and then the employer pools. Would I be guessing correctly to say you have an employer provided insurance and perhaps your parent company is based in in New York?


My intention of the cross state openness over all is that it would behave more like auto insurance does, instead of the disaster that has become health insurance.

If we allow customers to buy outside their state, and open up the insurance companies across states, there should be a balancing through competition. Not only in customer and business choice, but also states who will then have the onus of making their state more attractive to insurance companies to please their peeps or bring in income. By allowing the people to choose across state lines you'll avoid the monopoly like effects in "less appealing" states (like say Florida with it's retirees, etc) plus increase competitiveness that should bring costs down.

As a note; I do recall many complaints back in the day of "regional insurance zones" that Alaska's doctors were chronically underpaid because lower 48 insurance refused to pay going Alaska rates - I would presume the same happened in Hawaii. This should be mitigated by cross state purchasing.

 

[there4eyeM]

Either that or collectivize insurance nationally.