Making deals with Congress
When Congress asked the health insurance industry if it would stop charging higher premiums to customers with pre-existing conditions, it said “sure.”
So maybe it wasn’t quite so simple, but that is what it boiled down to.
Comprehensive health insurance
Congress is examining how it can create a plan that will provide health insurance to all Americans. The health insurance industry is willing to negotiate, as it is staunchly opposed to the creation of a government-run program.
Congress is willing to work with the health insurance companies rather than jump into nationalized health care.
Tighter regulation
Insurers also said they could accept more regulation of benefits, underwriting practices and other activities. What’s in it for them? If they are willing to comply with the regulations, it would make a public program unnecessary.
A government-run program would directly compete with private health insurance companies. That could send private insurers running for installment loans to keep their businesses afloat.
Pre-existing policies
It’s an age-old health insurance industry policy to charge higher premiums for people who have a history of sickness or a pre-existing condition. This new agreement means that health insurance companies could no longer take into account a person’s current health condition or medical history. Essentially, health insurance premiums would become equal opportunity.
Higher premiums for everyone?
Over the years, health insurance companies have said that if they stop charging higher premiums to people with pre-existing conditions it would make premiums for healthy people soar.
Now industry officials are “exploring ideas to prevent such increases by spreading the risks and costs across a larger population of both healthy and unhealthy people,” said Karen M. Ignagni, president of America’s Health Insurance Plans.
On the same page
So far, it seems Congress and the health insurance industry are working well together to get everyone in the country health insurance.
Sandy Praeger, the Kansas insurance commissioner, who testified Tuesday on behalf the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, said the companies were taking “a very good step in the right direction.”
“As we move toward getting everybody covered,” Praeger said, “we have to get rid of health status as a rating factor.” – From the New York Times
It is certainly admirable for insurers to be willing to cooperate and drop their premiums. However, I think Congress should probably also address tort reform. Granted, there are lawsuits that are legitimate, and yes, there are doctors who make mistakes that are above and beyond human nature that amount to gross negligence, but reforms have to be made so that the cost of malpractice premiums can go down. There are states that are losing doctors because they can’t afford premiums, and that is wrong.