Florida Health Insurance Companies Wary of Obama Proposals
The top four providers of Florida health insurance recently met to discuss health care under a Barack Obama administration, says Jeremy Cox of the Jacksonville Times-Union. Representatives from Humana, UnitedHealth, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida, and Aetna were in attendance.
The insurers believe that President Obama should enact a health insurance mandate for all Americans if, as they predict, he will require insurers to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions. They think that the cost will be prohibitive for carriers otherwise. At the moment, Obama has not publicly supported a mandate, and how exactly one would be carried out is unknown. He has supported a role for the private sector in universal health care, but that role will most likely be a change from the current market.
Instead of the plans Obama and congressional Democrats have proposed for health care reform, the insurance companies would prefer that the government focus mainly on enrolling eligible but currently uninsured individuals in federal-run programs like Medicaid and Medicare, Jeremy says. While the insurance companies agreed that greater coverage is a priority, they claim the task of covering other Americans should be left to them through innovative new plans.
