Wife and I and 3 kids. ALL very healthy and NO health problems. NO prescriptions on anyone.
New health care premium came in today. 16% rise over last year, about normal for the last 15 years. On average the policy has doubled every 6 1/2 years which is average.
This year policy is 12K for 5. 61/2 years from now it will be 24 K and 13 years from now it will be 48K for the same policy.
And you folks love this blank check health care system WE NOW HAVE.
We are fast becoming a nation of village idiots. The current system is UNSUSTAINABLE.
That's what you get when states keep you captive to in-state insurance providers.
The Dangers of McCain's Plan to Sell Health Insurance Across State Lines
Those who support purchasing health insurance from any state argue that it will invigorate market competition and drive down premiums. However, a recent study by the New America Foundation showed that:
The primary source of "savings" under [this kind of proposal] is not more competition or more efficient insurers. The savings comes from separating the healthy from the sick.... [It] would lower premiums for the healthiest Americans, but it would raise premiums and reduce coverage options for everyone else.
Indeed, permitting the sale of health insurance across state lines would undermine all existing consumer protections, which are determined state by state. As Families USA revealed, state consumer protections-particularly in the individual health insurance market-vary dramatically from state to state. Some states have made tremendous strides in creating accessible, functional insurance markets for individuals and small businesses. As the New America Foundation points out, Senator McCain's proposal would eliminate the best protections and bring all states down to the lowest common denominator:
[Selling health insurance across state lines] would have the ultimate effect of standardizing state regulation to the least restrictive level, thus de facto de-regulating individual insurance markets. Politically, this allows the de-regulatory preferences of one state to negate the regulatory preferences of the 49 other states, without either a national or state-specific vote.
This proposal has far more insidious implications for consumers than its proponents will admit. Crossing state lines to find a great deal on a limited edition autographed book is one thing. Crossing state lines to find health insurance just crosses the line.
The Dangers of McCain's Plan to Sell Health Insurance Across State Lines | Health and Wellness | AlterNet
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State of Denial
As Democrats scramble to assemble a health care reform package that a majority of the party can support, Republicans have agreed on what they claim is a quick and easy way to reduce health insurance costs. In delivering the Republican reply to the PresidentÂ’s recent joint-session speech, Charles Boustany of Louisiana offered the GOP plan, saying "Let's also talk about letting families and businesses buy insurance across state lines. I and many other Republicans believe that that will provide real choice and competition to lower the cost of health insurance."
It's an approach conservatives have been talking up for a while. Probably its most vocal proponent is Representative John Shadegg of Arizona, who introduced the idea formally this July with "The Health Care Choice Act of 2009." But a closer examination shows that it's the "Drill baby Drill" of health care reform--a cynical slogan masquerading as a serious public policy solution.
The basis for this approach is the work of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance (CAHI). CAHI describes itself as "
a research and advocacy association of insurance carriers"--in other words, the insurance industry. Its position? That state insurance benefit mandates "increase the cost of basic health coverage from a little less than 20% to perhaps 50%". Based on this assumption, Republicans argue: To lower insurance costs dramatically, all you have to do is get rid of or drastically reduce benefit mandates.
LetÂ’s start by looking more closely at what these "health insurance benefit mandates" really are. In our system, states license and regulate insurers who operate in their jurisdictions. They also have right to set the scope of coverage insurers must offer in order to do business within their borders. On occasion, the federal government has intervened to require that all health insurers include such things as coverage of adoptive children, mental health parity benefits, and minimum hospital stays for newborns and mothers in their policies. CAHI includes these federal benefit mandates in its study of "state" mandates--as if consumers could shop their way around them.
Selling insurance across state lines raises one more issue Republicans tend to ignore. Insurance companies keep costs down by using their volume-based bargaining power to make agreements with doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers to get lower rates than any individual buyer could ever achieve. But insurers operating from one state may have a difficult time, on their own, bargaining in states where they have relatively small market presence. It is unlikely that an insurer could ever get a doctor or hospital in Massachusetts to agree to the same fee schedule that is acceptable in Idaho. Even Medicare, the largest single "player" in the healthcare market, hasn't figured out a way to pay the same reimbursement rate to all health care providers across the country. It would seem like the only way for insurers to offer cheap insurance across states lines would be to offer less comprehensive and effective coverage--which, if this proposal goes through, is exactly what would happen.
