[…] There is no simple solution to the issue of balancing guaranteed issue health insurance, an individual mandate, and personal liberties. It will be interesting to see what 2011 brings in terms of court battles over the constitutionality of the individual mandate, and whether any other options become viable alternatives.
colorado
Is A Symbolic Repeal Vote Worth The Time?
[…] Political analysts generally agree that a repeal vote in the House is likely to pass, but much less likely to clear the Senate. If it did, it would be virtually impossible to override a presidential veto. So the vote next week is basically symbolic – which can also be looked at as a waste of congressional time and resources. A more productive solution might be to start looking for ways to significantly reduce the actual cost of health care. […]
Reviewing Health Insurance Premium Increases
[…] even with the new MLR guidelines and a significant review from the Division of Insurance to make sure this year’s rate increases are appropriate, our average rate increase is still nearly 13% – significantly higher than the 10% threshold that would trigger a review under the proposed federal regulation. […]
Three Years To Iron Out Details For Health Insurance Exchange
For anyone curious about the logistics that will go into setting up the new health insurance exchanges that will become active in 2014, this Denver Post article is an excellent overview. The article notes that the 2011 legislature will have to pass a bill to set up basic guidelines for the exchange, and a governing structure to oversee the process. There will be monthly committee meetings to hash out the details, and once you start to ponder all of the questions that still remain unanswered, it’s clear why it might take a few years to get the exchange up and running. […]
Colorado Receives $13.7 Million Award For Medicaid Program
Colorado was one of 15 states to receive a grant from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services this week, thanks to changes that the state made in the enrollment process for Medicaid in order to expand the program. Colorado got $13.7 million, which will be used to help finance the state’s Medicaid system. […]
Double Digit Premium Increases Continue In Colorado
The Colorado Division of Insurance issued a press release on Monday, addressing the fact that health insurance premiums in Colorado are continuing to increase. They reiterated some numbers from earlier this fall, noting that less than 5% of the overall rate increases for next year can be attributed to changes implemented by federal health care reform. The vast majority of the rate hikes that insureds will see in 2011 are due to factors that have been driving health insurance premiums for years, long before federal reform became an issue. As long as the cost of health care continues to rise, the cost of health insurance will rise along with it. […]
Possible Alternatives To The Individual Mandate
[…] While many other aspects of reform are generally popular (like the provision to allow young adults to remain on their parents’ health insurance until age 26, and the requirement that all policies be guaranteed issue starting in 2014), the individual mandate has raised a lot of hackles, with people feeling that the government is infringing on their rights by telling them that they have to buy a product (and in most cases, that product will come from a private company). […]
Anthem Blue Cross, Assurant, and Rocky Mountain Quoting 2011 Plans and Rates
Anyone looking to compare plans with 2011 rates can start with Anthem BCBS, Assurant, and Rocky Mountain Health Plans (get quotes here). These will include maternity coverage. More coming this week….
Colorado Falls To 13th In America’s Health Ranking
America’s Health Rankings released their annual report this month, and Colorado fell from 8th place in 2009 to 13th place in 2010. Overall, Colorado does quite well in terms of current health outcomes, but we fall short in terms of some factors that could lead to lower health outcomes over time (insurance coverage, geographic disparity, and immunization rates). […]
Standardized Language For Health Insurance
[…] In Colorado, all policies have long been required to have a standardized plan description form (separate from the carrier-created marketing brochure), and House Bill 1166 passed earlier this year, requiring that all policy information be written at no more than a 10th grade reading level. But I think that most consumers tend to look at brochures, mailers, online advertising, and other marketing materials designed by each insurance carrier. […]
Consumer Reports Health Insurance Rankings
I recently picked up a copy of the November issue of Consumer Reports, which included a section about health insurance. The article featured an interview with President Obama, and a good overview of how the changes included in the PPACA will impact consumers. In addition, Consumer Reports published a ranking of 227 HMO and POS (point-of-service) plans (you have to subscribe to Consumer Reports Health in order to be able to see the details online), according to data compiled by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). […]
430 People Already Enrolled In GettingUsCovered
[…] Even when policies are free or very low cost (such as Medicaid or Child Health Plan Plus), a significant number of eligible individuals continue to go without coverage, for a myriad of reasons. So it stands to reason that plenty of uninsured people who are eligible for GettingUsCovered won’t apply. Some likely aren’t aware of the availability, and many others simply can’t afford to pay the premiums. But apparently Colorado is enrolling people at a fairly fast pace – as of November 1, there were 20 states that had fewer than 50 people enrolled in their newly-created high risk pools.
Funding Cover Colorado
For nearly two decades, Cover Colorado has been providing health insurance to people in Colorado who don’t have access to group health insurance coverage and have pre-existing conditions the make them uninsurable (or unable to get coverage without exclusion riders or rate increases that put their premium above that offered by Cover Colorado) in the individual health insurance market. While we’re lucky to have such a resource, it doesn’t come cheap […]
Diabetes Accounts For Nearly A Quarter Of US Hospital Costs
Diabetes now accounts for nearly a quarter of all hospital spending in the US – about $83 billion a year in hospital fees. The report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality was released in August, but I just came across it today, and the details are staggering. The vast majority – 95% – of all diabetes cases are Type 2 diabetes, which is nearly always caused by poor diet and/or a sedentary lifestyle. In addition, 70% of hospital stays for diabetics are paid for by government health insurance: 60% by Medicare and 10% by Medicaid. […]
Health Reform Not Having Much Impact On Colorado Premiums
Although the increases we’ve seen this year are similar to what we’ve seen over the last several years, there have been more questions since the PPACA was signed into law in March about whether federal health care reform is the driving factor for this year’s increases. To clarify, the Colorado Division of Insurance has released a statement noting that federal health reform is responsible for less than 5% of the total health insurance premium increase in Colorado this year. […]
Amendment 63 Defeated In Colorado Despite False Advertising
Three states had ballot initiatives this week that attempted to outlaw the mandate in the PPACA that requires everyone to have health insurance starting in 2014. Colorado was the only state that did not approve the measure. Voters in Colorado defeated Amendment 63, which would have made it illegal for the state of Colorado to force people to buy health insurance. Even if it had been approved by voters, it would have been a symbolic measure, as the mandate requiring all of us to have health insurance coverage as of 2014 is a federal law, and thus supersedes state laws. […]
Group Premiums In Colorado Increasing Faster Than National Average
A survey conducted by the Lockton Benefit Group found that premiums for employer-sponsored group health insurance policies in Colorado were increasing by an average of 14.4% for 2011, which was “significantly higher than reported nationally.” This was the tenth year in a row that premiums saw double digit increases, but the current increase is the largest in five years, and most employers surveyed (more than 73%) plan to make plan changes or increase employee contributions to offset the large rate increases. […]
How The Colorado Division Of Insurance Reviews Rate Filings
[…] The Division of Insurance has recently released an extensive FAQ page detailing how the review process works. The page includes data about health insurance premiums in Colorado, how they compare with the rest of the country, and specifics about how the Division of Insurance reviews rate increase proposals from carriers. […]
High Risk Pool Eligibility
[…] There is another significant difference between Cover Colorado and GettingUsCovered, in terms of eligibility. Both plans allow eligibility for applicants who have one of several specific medical conditions, and both plans accept applicants who have either been declined by a private insurance company or offered coverage with a pre-existing condition exclusion. But while Cover Colorado also allows people to enroll if they have been offered a private policy with a rate that is higher than a comparable Cover Colorado plan, GettingUsCovered does not allow this option. […]
Mega And Mid-West Being Investigated Again
A west coast legal firm has launched an investigation into the market conduct of Mega Life and Health Insurance Company and Mid-West National Life Insurance Company. Their parent company, HealthMarkets, Inc., is also being investigated, along with the two shareholders (Blackstone Group, L.P. and Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.) who purchased HealthMarkets in 2006 for $850 million. […]
Baseless Fear Mongering Hurts The Healthcare Reform Debate
[…] There’s nothing wrong with being opposed to all or part of the health care reform law. However, it’s not factual to call the PPACA “socialism”. It’s does a disservice to voters to say that the reform law contains “death panels”. It’s not factual to say that patients will have to go to a bureaucrat before seeing his or her doctor. Spreading this sort of misinformation is truly harmful to the debate. Rather than discussing the actual facts of the law and searching for sensible solutions and compromises, fear-mongering sound bites with no basis in reality only serve to get people riled up.
Maternity Coverage In The Individual Health Insurance Market
The House Committee on Energy and Commerce released a memorandum this week detailing the practices of the four largest private health insurance carriers (Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group and Wellpoint) regarding maternity coverage on individual policies. For anyone who is familiar with the individual health insurance market, the details of the memo will come as no surprise. But since the majority of Americans are covered by group health insurance plans that cover maternity just like any other claim, the details of how maternity coverage works in the individual market may be eye-opening for a lot of people. […]
A Compromise That Makes Sense For Child-Only Policies
[…] Even with guaranteed issue open enrollment periods for child only policies, insurers would definitely be taking on an increased risk compared with what they had when all individual policies were medically underwritten. If insurers could be allowed to continue to accept healthy kids (who present less of a financial risk to the carriers) throughout the year, this would help to offset the losses that they would incur by insuring the unhealthy kids who enroll during the open enrollment period. Regardless of whether that’s in line with the “language and intent” of the PPACA, it makes sense in the real world.
Opposing Viewpoints On Amendment 63 In Colorado
Voters in Colorado will decide the fate of Amendment 63 next month, and the issue is definitely one of the more divisive ones on our ballot this year. The Denver Post ran a couple of editorials over the weekend that address both sides of the debate, and they’re both worth reading. Bob Semro, a policy analyst with the Bell Policy Center, explains why Amendment 63 is a bad idea, while Jon Caldera and Linda Gorman, both with the Independence Institute, detail the virtues of Amendment 63. […]
Regulators And Insurers Still Working On Child-Only Coverage Issue
[…] So far, none of the carriers who had backed out of the child-only market have commented on whether the open enrollment periods might make them change their minds, but AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans) has said that they are continuing to work with regulators to try to find solutions that would make the child-only market feasible for insurers in the future.