Will Buying Insurance from other Companies Help us get More Affordable Health Insurance

So the Republicans have successfully put the kibosh on the health care plan. Not that they don't have any ideas of their own; whatever health care plan comes to pass, it is sure to have a lot of Republican inputs to it. One of their important suggestions in the whole debacle, is the idea that Americans should be able to buy affordable health insurance across states. Right now, the situation is that you can only buy insurance from an operator who is registered in your own state.

Actually, that is a particularly significant piece of Republican sentiment in the matter. The Democrats are actually taking the Republicans up on this idea, and you can fully expect that whatever health care bill passes, this should be a part of it. Actually, you heard a lot of this when Senator McCain was stumping for his presidency in 2008. Everyone now feels that turning the entire country into the single health insurance market, will only make things more competitive for the insurance companies, and bring prices down. If you live in Colorado, and you suddenly find that a small health insurance company in Pennsylvania is making an offer that your local corporations just cannot match. You could easily buy across state lines.

And they have a point. If your state government has no control over most of the insurance providers in your state, the government just can't exercise of its consumer protection laws anymore. The companies will just say, "Oh!, We're from out of state, so nice try". Actually, in effect, people could end up paying more expensive premiums. Affordable health insurance actually looks much more shaky under this plan, Not to mention more expensive. So how would this actually work?

The states will have to form new principles of how to control companies operating there from outside. They will just have to bring out new legislation to this effect. And they would also need to license their own insurance corporations, to deal outside of the state. Alternatively, the federal office that governs the healthcare issues of federal employees, could deal with out-of-state insurers. In fact, the federal government could apply a single law to all of them, and prohibitsthem from offering anything less than a high level of care.

But the thing is, more choice does not always mean cheaper costs. What if it just results in customers choosing the policies with the lowest price tag, and opting for the lowest cover? For most poor families, getting the lowest possible amount of cover could seem to be a really attractive option sometimes, until the day they fall ill. And what happens if there is a dispute? There are hundreds of thousands of disputes every year involving health insurance companies that deny claims for perfectly valid treatment options. If there is a dispute, subscribers may find themselves having to travel across state lines each year. Affordable health insurance, doesn't come from an excess of competition. It comes with a reasonable amount of time, and proactive government legislation.

Are you Pregnant or are you an Athlete? With Blue Shield Health Insurance, Texas, you can Forget Individual Cover

If you get your health insurance coverage at work, like 60% of America does, you'll find it hard to truly appreciate how terrifying it is, when like what 10% of America is going through now, your health insurance provider raises its rates by nearly half, like they are doing California and Maine. If President Obama's new health care plan does come through, it won't make that much of a difference to those with workplace coverage. The 15% or so in America that has no cover of any kind - their lives will change forever. That puts the figure at about a quarter of the entire population of the nation, of people who either pay out of their own pockets or just do without. Health care reform would be wonderful for these people; and not an inconsiderable number they are too. But really, how bad is it dealing with a health insurance company of your own, and not going through the company you work for? The Blue Shield health insurance companies of Texas, Florida and California have their individual insurance policies published online, and if you read them, you would know.

Here's an interesting statistic; BlueCross Blue Shield of Texas is the biggest player in that state. And also, Texas is the state where there are the most people who have no insurance whatsoever - a full quarter of the population. Let's say that you get by on doing freelance landscaping jobs around your town in Texas. You want to get your individual insurance, and you sit down with an agent who represents Blue Shield health insurance. The first thing he does is, check you through a list of more than 100 health conditions that will disqualify you from getting any kind of care if you answer in the positive. If you are pregnant right then, you can forget it. If you have had an organ transplant or Addison's disease, or have had some kind of minor stroke, the agent will just get up and leave. And if you happen to be a little overweight, they will still accept you, but at a big jump up in the premiums.

In patriotic Texas, a war veteran who has had an amputation suffered fighting a war, can right away be refused any kind of health care policy with Blue Shield health insurance. You can however get something at higher rates, if you only had a partial amputation. At least this makes some kind of crazy sense; but why would they deny you anything if you have acne, or varicose veins? And oh, don't forget that if you happen to be a minor or an athlete or an oil driller working offshore, you had better keep walking. This is the craziest policy anyone ever saw - why would they deny someone in the fine physical shape of an athlete, health insurance cover?

So basically, Blue Shield health insurance only wants to offer you health insurance if you have practically no disease whatsoever, and don't work on a job that might one day give you something. It certainly makes a lot of business sense for them, but it doesn't make any business sense for the customer. With President Obama's healthcare reform, denials like this would be illegal; and yet no Texas Republican, supports it. But things are coming to a head now. All these health insurance companies are raising their rates through the roof, and there may be no option but to accept reform.

The End of Affordable Individual Health Insurance, as we Know It

The changes are harly trivial. Health insurance policyholders in a handful of states across the country have been receiving notifications from their insurance companies that they can expect to pay perhaps 15% more on their policies, for the same service. One health insurance company in Maine, Anthem Blue Cross is jacking up its rates nearly 23%, and is getting a lot of hate mail from local representatives and customers. That's not as bad as what they did in California - the sunny state saw nearly twice that kind of escalation. And in Oregon, people got hit with a 25% hike last year, and can expect something like that this year too. All this happens mainly to people who buy their own personal policies, instead of going through the companies they work for. Bulk purchasers, like employers, see some kind of reason prevail. If insurance companies are not reasonable, the employer will walk with his hundreds of potential customers. All of this could be an incidental effect of how the insurance companies lost thousands of customers over the past year - customers who could no longer afford cover, now that they don't have jobs. Affordable individual health insurance is quickly becoming a thing of the past.

Right away, people can expect to be paying a third more on individual policies, says the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. If this gets your back up and gets you planning the vitriol you'll pour down in your letter to your Congressman, you're out of luck. The government doesn't really have enough power, dictating prices. But there certainly is going to be plenty of table pounding at state legislatures. It's not that the health insurance companies don't see how difficult they are making it for families to get access to healthcare. For a family of three, that works out to something like $1300 a month. In several states, consumer protection groups our putting together major protest rallies; and they should. Once access to affordable individual health insurance is taken away, where does that leave us? And since the insurance companies understand the situation from our point of view, they do support President Obama's health care reform, now hopelessly stalled. They want some kind of system that can help everyone in the country be covered too. If lots of people drop out of the system like they are doing now, the companies have no choice but to spread their losses among other existing customers.

Still, the government in Maine, rejected some of the health insurance companies rate increases; after negotiations, they brought it down to 11% or so. And the health insurance companies are suing the state. The company argues that they aren't doing this for some kind of obscene profit. They claim that they can barely stay above water as it is. In Kansas too, insurance companies are raising their rates by a third. Mostly, the governments are falling in line behind these demands. They do agree that the cost of taking care of people is rising, and one can't expect these companies to not pass on those costs to the customer. Basically, anything between 10% and 25% is what we need to expect. Just one more effect of the recession.