Health Insurance Blog

America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is holding roundtable discusssions across the country as part of their Campaign for an American Solution.  More information about this nationwide campaign can be found at www.americanhealthsolution.org

Providence Rhode Island was their seventh and most recent stop on the tour.  Previous tour stops included Columbus, Detroit, Denver, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, Albuquerque.  After stopping in Providence, subsequent roundtable discussions will include Little Rock, and Chicago before finally concluding in Tampa.

At these round table discussions, AHIP representatives present their health care reform proposals and receive valuable feedback from concerned citizens across the country.

AHIP states the core principles of their proposal are:  coverage,  affordability, quality, value, choice and portability.

In the last couple of years, AHIP’s Board of Directors has developed a range of health policy proposals to:

1) Cover the uninsured,

2) Improve the quality and safety of health care,

3) Reform the individual health insurance market, and

4) Reduce rising health care costs.

To learn more about AHIP’s health care proposals visit www.AHIPbelieves.com

Members of Wisconsin’s Health Insurance Risk Sharing Plan (HIRSP) will experience either no rate increase or a single-digit increase to their health insurance rates in 2009 as a result of changes made to the plan, such as offering high-deductible health plan options.

Founded almost 30 years ago (1979), HIRSP has been Wisconsin’s health insurer of last resort since that date.  HIRSP offers health insurance to Wisconsin residents who, for one reason or another, can’t enroll in adequate and affordable health insurance coverage, from private health insurance companies due to their medical conditions, or because they have become unemployed and no longer have access to health insurance coverage through their employer.

More Information about Wisconsin health insurance options.

Tennessee residents who are between jobs can now purchase health insurance coverage through CoverTN.  A new category within CoverTN called Tennesseans Between Jobs, provides Tennessee health insurance coverage to individuals who have worked at least one 20 hour week in the last six months while earning less than $43,000annually.

Tennesseans Between Jobs is also open to individuals who have had their work hours reduced to below 20 per week in the last six months.

Those who are enrolled in the program pay two-thirds of their monthly health insurance premiums and the state of Tennessee picks up the remaining third.

With today’s state of the economy, and unemployment rates expected to continue their upward climb, this recent move by the state of Tennessee seems like a move in the right direction and one that other states should take note of — particularly states with above average unemployement rates.

In the absense of a state subsidized health insurance plan like CoverTN, the best option for individuals in-between jobs who believe that they will only be unemployed for a short period of time is a short term health insurance plan, but they can generally available for up to 180 days and many times cannot be removed

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota (BCBSMN) announce the launch of SureBlue a new health insurance offering for small businesses in Minnesota that removes uncertainty from health care expenses while offering a comprehensive health care solution.

SureBlue designed for employer-groups with between 51 and 249 employees builds a three year health insurance rate guarantee into the product.

To qualify for the health insurance rate guarantee, Minnesota businesses must agree to a three-year plan that includes among other things participating in a health risk assessment that identifies opportunities to improve the overall healthiness of the employee workforce.

The SureBlue rate guarantee does not keep rates unchanged for the three year period but rather fix annual rate increases at 6%, well below the roughly 9% that is foretasted for 2009.  In addition, over the next five years health insurance rates are expected to far outpace inflation.

More Information about health insurance in Minnesota.

Barack Obama recently ripped into McCain over an article that the Republican presidential candidate wrote about the health insurance marketplace in a periodical called Contingencies.

McCain cited the need to increase competition in the health insurance market to expand coverage and reduce health care costs. McCain wrote,

“Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.”

Senator Obama’s respone to this quote in essence was that running the US health care industry like Wall Street has been run would clearly be a recipe for disaster.

A senior advisor to McCain (Douglas Holtz-Eakin), later clarified McCain’s statement by saying that

“the comment on banking regulations in the article referred to a change in 1995 that allowed U.S. residents to bank across state lines.”

and then fired back at Senator Obama by saying

If Barack Obama thinks that today’s financial troubles were caused by policies which allowed Americans to use an ATM anywhere in this country, then it is better that he continue to be silent about solutions to the crisis on Wall Street.

There are very few issues that the two presidential candidates differ on as dramatically as health care.

NPR’s “All Things Considered” on Sunday examined the McCain and Obama health care proposals. Click here to listen

Members of health plans across the country have loudly voiced their complaints when their health insurance company has rescinded their health insurance coverage after a serious illness.  Typically, a policy is rescinded when an insurer determines that the member lied or omitted key information when submitting their enrollment application

In response to this consumer backlash, Aetna claims that it rescinds far fewer individual health insurance policies than other carriers and has now set up a process whereby if their health policy does happen to get rescinded that can appeal to an independent panel of doctors.

According to Aetna internal records, they have only rescinded 165 policies out of 570,000 sold since 2005.  Aetna currently covers over 350,000 people through individual health insurance plans nationally.

eHealthinsurance has launched an educational website (www.cobralearning.com) designed to help consumers learn more about COBRA, as well as COBRA alternatives.

eHealthinsurance recently undertook a national survey which opened up their eyes as to how uninformed the Amercian public is about both COBRA and individual health insurance options.  The findings of the survey were so profound that eHealthinsurance undertook a project to help educate consumers faced with tough decisions about their health care.

Findings include:

• Roughly 40% of adults surveyed new little or nothing about COBRA
• 60% didn’t know that individual health insurance options were generally less expensive
• 45% were not aware that individual health plans could provide similar benefits as COBRA

Additionally and probably the most compelling findings from eHealth’s perspective was that

• 52% thought COBRA was their only option for health insurance coverage
• 30% of people who refused COBRA coverage when given the option decided to go without health coverage and were uninsured

The general lack of knowledge in the marketplace about COBRA health coverage as well as indiviudal health insurance options struck a chord with eHealth and they decided that launching an educational website would be important to make Americans faced with making important health insurance decisions more informed about their options.  The decison to launch this educational initiative wasn’t 100% altuistic however as eHealth stands to gain quite a bit from consumers understanding that their are more affordable health insurance options than COBRA, and they are the best place to shop for them online.

In article written by Joan Mazzolini of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio health insurance rates have increased 9 times faster than the rate at which wages have risen.

From 2000 through 2007 the average cost to insure a family in Ohio through employer sponsored health coverage increased over 80% while wages rose less than 9% over that same time period.  Individual health insurance rates in Ohio increases just over 60% over the same time frame.

According to Ron Pollack of Families USA

Rising health care costs were a problem in Ohio before the current economic downturn emerged, and slow wage growth combined with significant job losses have made matters worse.

The only state that showed a larger disparity between the increase in health insurance premiums and wage growth was Michigan.

As health insurance becomes more expensive relative to earnings, many people have difficult decisions to make in order to make ends meet.  Going uninsured is never a good idea, as a serious injury or illness can leave you financially crippled.  One way to lower your monthly health insurance premiums is to change your health coverage to a plan with a higher deductible, such as an high deductible health plan combined with an HSA.

Recent studies have shown that state health insurance mandates such as guaranteed issue, community rating and specific benefit mandates have made rate variances between different states extreme, and in the process reduced competition.

The federal McCarran-Ferguson Act was enacted to allow states to set their own requirements as to what and whom health insurance companies must cover.  As a result, some states cover such things as marriage counseling, acupuncture, and hairpieces.   Some experts believe that about 25% of the uninsured market doesn’t purchase health insurance because of the needlessly high health insurance rates.

Another mandate that has driven up health insurance rates in some states is guaranteed issue (a mandate that requires health insurance companies to accept all who apply regardless of health condition) which when in combination with community rating (individuals don’t pay more due to their relative unhealthiness) forces the carriers to raise their rates for everybody to protect themselves against potential losses that result.

One proposed solution to the countries delicate health insurance market at the national level is the Health Care Choice Act (H.R. 4460)

The Health Care Choice Act would allow shoppers to buy individual health insurance online, over the telephone or through an agent or broker from any health plan in the country.  Consumers could choose among policies from health insurers anywhere in the country.  The health plans would be regulated by the insurer’s home state (i.e. if an Ohio resident purchased a policy from Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina, they would be regulated by the health insurance laws in NC).  If consumers have no need for benefits that are mandated in their state (like fertility treatments or hairpieces) they could purchase a health plan from a insurer in another state that does not require the health insurance company to offer them

Allowing consumers to select from a national pool of health plans, will give health insurance shoppers more opportunities to find affordable health insurance, and plans that better fit their needs.

According to many health care policy experts neither presidential candidate is proposing a health care plan that contains workable solutions to the countries most serious health care issues.

The knock on Senator McCain’s proposed health care plan is that it will not help to reduce the number of uninsured Americans in this country:

Eliminating the tax credit that employer’s currently receive will induce them to stop offering health insurance coverage to an estimated 20 million workers who currently have employer-sponsored health insurance.  Concurrently, McCain’s proposed tax credits to individuals will allow an estimated 21 million people who are uninsured to purchase health coverage, this includes people being under insured as a result of purchasing bare bones insurance policies.  Based in this analysis only an additional 1 million people will be insured, and over time the tax credit will provide a smaller and smaller boost as health insurance rates increase and the tax credit stays the same.

while the expected shortcoming of  Senator Obama’s plan is that it will do nothing to keep rising health care costs in check.

Extending government control over health insurance with new regulations will almost assuredly increase the cost of health insurance unless savings from other policies ( such as improving mgmt. of chronic conditions, and the use of health information technologies for example) take place, which experts don’t think will happen as they have not yielded any measurable savings to date.

The reality is, regardless of who wins the presidential election come November, we are not close to solving the health care conundrum in the United States anytime soon.