Insurance news

[missroserose]

The good, or at least less-sucky: Between getting married and Brian turning 25 over the last year, our auto insurance has gone down almost $250 per six-month premium. So that's nice, even if it's still a mandatory large expenditure. Sigh.

The wince-inducingly awful: Word is the health insurance industry as a whole is rejoicing - not only is it looking like healthcare reform as a whole is going to bring them millions of new customers (including government subsidized lower-income people), but the one bargaining chip the government had planned in order to keep them from taking complete and total advantage of their customers (the creation of a public option to compete with the private sector) is losing support, and there's talk of only requiring them to cover 65% of costs on cheaper plans. Jesus H. Christ on a cracker. I didn't honestly think things could be any worse than they are, but pass this "reform" and the poorer folk are going to be even more screwed - not to mention the taxpayers who'll be subsidizing their worthless "plans". But the insurance industry gets richer, so everybody who matters wins!

As a sidenote - I particularly love this bit: "In the first half of 2009, the health service and HMO sector spent nearly $35 million lobbying Congress, the White House and federal healthcare offices, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics." And how much of that $35 million came from/is going to be offset by denying paying customers' claims for bullshit reasons, thus sticking them with even more bills?

I dunno about you guys, but I'm headed straight to the city of Headdesk in the great, time-honored land of Political Demoralization. Anyone else want to come along?

Comments

[gracewanderer.livejournal.com]

All of these are true, but that doesn't mean it won't work. I'm much more inclined to be cynical about the government going into business themselves* than about the government regulating private industry in a market that it doesn't have a stake in.

Incidentally, the option I like most is to have health insurance companies that are non-profit, member-owned institutions, kind of like credit unions, with similar membership "requirements". (In Utah, the requirement for most credit unions is just that you live in a certain county, or even that you live in the state of Utah.) But I haven't heard this discussed as an option so, whatever.

*Where they are a competitor but also set the rules for the marketplace, and can also partially fund themselves with tax money, there won't be any real competition, and when the private companies go out of business all we'll be left with will be shitty government run health insurance options. But I'm sure you've heard this argument before and have some reason for thinking it won't happen this way or thinking that it wouldn't be bad if it did.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

I like the nonprofit credit-union-style option too, but there's a very good reason it hasn't been discussed - money. Health insurance companies make millions of dollars of profits every year, and forcing them to go nonprofit would be political suicide - they can afford to hire armies of lobbyists (and indeed, already have) to persuade/bully lawmakers into refusing to support legislation they don't like, not to mention disseminating the kind of bullshit misinformation that's derailing public support for the current effort. The only reason they're even on board with the current idea is because requiring everyone to have health insurance is a potential goldmine for them - especially if they can get that pesky public option idea swept under the rug and instead have the government directly subsidize "plans" for low-income people. Instead of having to compete with the government, they get money directly from the government. You can imagine how many execs are jizzing their pants over the possibility.

I have heard that argument, and I agree that it's not a perfect system. As I recall, the original plan put income limits on the public option, so if you earned more than a certain amount of money you had to either go with an employer-funded or privately-bought plan. But even without that, I tend to think of it as the lesser of two evils, and given the record profits they're making, I think the insurance companies have a lot of leeway before they're in any danger of going out of business.

[gracewanderer.livejournal.com]

You don't need the government to pass laws requiring a company to be a non-profit entity, you just need some people willing to set up a non profit organization and start offering services. I know of at least one non-profit health insurance company (DMBA) and they offer some of the best coverage at the lowest rates in the state. Unfortunately you have to be an employee of the LDS church to get coverage from them.