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Health-insurance premiums could rise 40% or more next year
- jimnotgym 7y agoThis is not inevitable. The government could stop it.
- luckylion 7y agoYeah, they could force doctors and nurses to work overtime for free.
- erpellan 7y agoOr nationalize the insurance companies and set up a national health service.
- code_duck 7y ago"The nation’s largest insurers, which include giant for-profit companies like Anthem, CVS Health and UnitedHealth, reported billions of dollars in profits last year, and analysts say these companies have abundant capital to absorb any losses because of the pandemic" ". Lee warned that insurers are likely to seek rates that are double their additional costs from the virus. If their costs go up 20 percent, Mr. Lee says rates could jump as much as 40 percent in 2021." I don't get the impression that paying medical staff for working even registers in this equation.
- egypturnash 7y agoOr they could pull money out of thin air and give it to the doctors and nurses instead of sinking it into the stock market.
- karatestomp 7y agoThis’ll kill more people and likely hurt the economy more than 9/11 did. How much money did we spend on wars and security junk after that? Seems like a reasonable amount to ask for over the next couple decades to help fix our healthcare system and support people.
- mrscottson 7y agoMakes sense, stock buybacks should be illegal for companies that required bailouts. Better yet, they should be made illegal for certain essential industries like healthcare.
- CptFribble 7y agoThe 2nd amendment doesn't force gun owners to be open 24/7/365 to fulfill your right to guns. Universal healthcare wouldn't force doctors to work overtime for free.
- room500 7y agoThis assumes that nothing in the medical field will change. In most professions, an increase in demand would cause wages to increase, which would cause more people to flock to the profession. Medicine has intentionally put barriers up to prevent more people from entering the field. But then, when the shortages are pointed out, they throw up their hands. You can't tell me that everyone needs to go $100K's in debt and devote 10 years of medical school/residency to be able to practice family medicine. But the people who are benefitting from this system (the doctors who already went through the training and loans) aren't willing to change it.
- zrail 7y agoOr, and I’m just saying maybe, we could use this crisis as an opportunity to create a Federal-level reinsurance program. This isn’t quite Medicare for all but it would guarantee costs higher than some reasonable number are spread across the entire population.
- redis_mlc 7y ago> This isn’t quite Medicare for all Why not have "Medicare for all"? Like every other Western country.
- analog31 7y agoMy impression is that medicare for all covers people, and reinsurance covers insurance companies. A huge danger would be that the premiums would be insufficient, and it would become a taxpayer bailout program. Spreading a cost over the population doesn't necessarily mean it's a reasonable cost. Perhaps a middle ground is to have it like the FDIC, which covers depositors not banks. As I understand it, if a bank goes under, the FDIC takes it over and runs it until a suitable buyer can be found.
- seanmcdirmid 7y agoThat isn’t true though. Switzerland has a much better predecessor version of the ACA: everyone is required to buy insurance (with subsidies for those that can’t). They got rid of the group market so everyone is in the same risk pool, which is an improvement over our system. However, Switzerland has the second highest healthcare costs when comparing developed countries in a per capita basis.
- karatestomp 7y agoAFAIK every other rich country regulates some or all medical costs per procedure or what have you (that is, they have price controls). Some do it directly and others by establishing a monopsony on buying healthcare, but that and a good fall-back insurance provider (or a system set up such that one isn’t needed as everyone’s basically already on it) seem to be the common necessary ingredients in keeping costs sane and everyone covered, as far as I can tell.
- baq 7y agoThis mixes elegantly with the upcoming recession. Less people being able to afford health care compounded with even less people being able to afford health care. Like the article states, either government steps up or this whole system collapses financially.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- toomuchtodo 7y agoIt’s the ideal storm to push the US to universal healthcare. It would’ve happened eventually, COVID simply pushed up the timeline by rapidly overextending an already failing system.
- _bxg1 7y agoLet's hope.
- isoprophlex 7y agohttps://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm And already, US healthcare spending is at least twice that of other developed countries, at arguably much reduced availability to the average American. as an outsider, the inability of the USA to change its healthcare system is baffling.
- CPLX 7y agoIf you’re baffled you can start with the concept that all that extra money being spent is going to specific people and organizations, who will work to preserve it. It’s a textbook tragedy of the commons example.
- danharaj 7y agoIt's not a tragedy of the commons if there's a specific class of people who control the resources who dictate what is politically possible.
- scrollbar 7y agoCan you elaborate more on your point about tragedy of the commons? Maybe I'm dense but it sounds a lot less like many commoners taking advantage of a common shared resource to the point of destruction. More like "corporate socialism", "regulatory capture", or "corruption"
- leetcrew 7y agotragedy of the commons is not the best way of describing it. a large fraction of the US workforce works in healthcare (doctors, nurses) and related fields (insurance, pharma, etc.). they may have their gripes with the current system, but ultimately it pays their bills so they don't want to see too much of a change to the status quo. then you have most fulltime employees getting insurance through their employer. even the ones on shitty plans are somewhat protected from seeing the full costs because the employer doesn't usually disclose their share of premiums. I have a decent high-deductible plan that I pay zero premiums for; I have literally no idea how much it costs and no real way to find out (short of harassing our benefits manager). on top of this, you have the powerful institutions/individuals who are making real money of the situation and lobby to perpetuate it. the small subset of the population that isn't more or less apathetic faces an uphill battle to change anything.
- redis_mlc 7y ago> Insurance premiums could spike as much as 40 percent next year Don't they every year? Not even kidding.
- brandmeyer 7y agoDepends widely on the market. Well-diversified urban markets have been doing much better than rural markets. Diversity in this case is on healthiness and age axes rather than gender or racial axes.
- edoceo 7y agoWe paid $2100/mo in 2019. It's $2900/mo in 2020. Regence through Gusto.
- ac29 7y agoNo? That would mean going up by 30x every decade, which would obviously quickly exceed people's entire income. I checked mine, and the past 3 annual increases were 7.7%, 13.3% and 6.9%. edit: I should add I'm on an individual plan purchased directly from an insurer, not a group or employer plan.
- digi59404 7y agoFantastical notions of universal healthcare aside.. This was to be expected, and it won’t be well received. It’s also not necessary, and shouldn’t happen. Much of the US Healthcare expense when insurance companies are involved is fake. For example, last week I got a medical statement from my insurance. The total cost was a couple grand. I paid 20$ co-pay, and insurance paid a couple hundred. The remainder was “negotiated down, look at this great value your insurance provided!” If I were to pay out of pocket the 220$ instead of my health insurance premium that month I could have easily paid it. The same is true for emergency surgeries, the actual medical cost of things like brain surgery is around 10-15k. Atleast at some providers, and not hospitals that gouge. My point here is - Insurance companies have spend decades rewriting the healthcare system to their advantage. They’ve spent years boosting the cost of healthcare, while paying only a fraction and making the remainder of the money disappear. Hospitals have spent years reducing costs while charging 100k for some surgeries in hopes they’ll get even 20k. And have 80k “negotiated”. There’s plenty of money in the system between insurance companies and healthcare systems. The resolution here isn’t single-payer. The resolution is to force insurance companies to pay their fair share instead of hoarding money. There’s no reason they should increase their rates right now. They should be breaking into their reserves to handle this.
- jjoonathan 7y agoBack when I took health care policy class in college, we did a cost breakdown / comparison tree between the US health care system and others. One striking result was that each head of the hydra -- hospitals, insurance companies, drug companies -- did a remarkable job of evenly sharing the ~2x cost inflation factor vs other countries. Of course, each head of the hydra points at the other two and claims it isn't the problem.
- karatestomp 7y agoI’d replace “hospitals” with “care and testing providers generally” but yeah, I reached the same conclusion looking into this on my own. Each is screwing us a ton, which adds up to 3x a ton, but they can always say “don’t look at me, I’m not most of the problem!”
- rayhendricks 7y ago$72k estimate for a hospital case. That is above the median yearly income, it is absolutely time for the government to nationalize healthcare and provide Medicare for all. I’m not worried about paying a few hundred for a premium for Medicare per month, it’s the Monopoly money hospital bill that is the problem.
- gridlockd 7y agoIt may be premature to evaluate performance of different systems in the current crisis, but I would like to point out that the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland do not have nationalized healthcare. Italy, on the other hand...
- rayhendricks 7y agoI fully understand that, but NL/DE/CH do not allow their healthcare providers to pull the shenanigans that we do in the United States. It is incredibly frustrating to need to go to the urgent care for strep throat or something and then not have any idea how much it will cost afterwards, and also have a health plan with a $2000 deductible and $4000 out of pocket max. This is literally the garbage that we in the USA have to deal with all the time.
- ac29 7y ago> It is incredibly frustrating to need to go to the urgent care for strep throat or something and then not have any idea how much it will cost afterwards Isn't that stuff all defined though? I just looked at my insurance, and it clearly states Urgent Care visit is $65 and a Strep Lab test is $28 (both out of pocket, after insurance costs). Granted, getting costs on something more complicated is more difficult, but there's still the defined deductible and out of pocket maximums that can be useful.
- rayhendricks 7y agoMuch of it is defined in their policies and imo Kalifesque reality, however if the strep test accidentally goes to an out of network lab, then you will have to pay their imaginary rate or argue with your insurance provider. Another example would be using an out of network anesthesiologist, which one would not be informed of and then receive a surprise bill three moths later. Some states have passed legislation which somewhat protects against this however here is a good example of it https://www.google.com/amp/s/khn.org/news/even-with-insurance-she-faced-227k-in-medical-bills-what-it-took-to-get-answers/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/khn.org/news/even-with-insuranc...
- ghouse 7y agoFrom 2011, but the message is unchanged: the US spends more than 2x per capita, but receives average results: https://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/2011/04/26/cost-of-health-care-by-country-national-geographic/ https://thesocietypages.org/graphicsociology/2011/04/26/cost...
- coryrc 7y agoBecause we spend too much on unhealthy elderly people. Guess who will vote against fixing that?
- coryrc 7y agohttps://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/health-care/elderly-medical-spending-medicare/ https://journalistsresource.org/studies/government/health-ca... https://www.politifact.com/article/2013/jan/28/federal-spending-old-young-numbers/ https://www.politifact.com/article/2013/jan/28/federal-spend... The spending is almost entirely on the elderly. Cuts that matter mean less for them. They've already got Medicare so there's no "wasteful" insurance company to save on eliminating.
- claudeganon 7y agoOf course this will largely be a cynical maneuver by insurance companies to make more money, who now, because of this pandemic, are seeing huge reductions in non-COVID claims. It’s always just an excuse to screw more people and these companies should be abolished.
- brandmeyer 7y agoCOVID-19 is going to have severe economic impacts on many different transactions. Renters versus landowners. Patients versus insurance providers. Insurance providers versus care providers. Oil producers versus refiners. Refiners versus retailers. In each case, both sides are going to try as hard as they can to isolate the losses to the other party. In situations where their bargaining power and leverage are balanced, both parties will bear some of the loss. In cases where one side has much more economic power, well, you can see where this is going. In the insurance and health care markets, barring radical restructuring, it will come down to state regulators to ensure that the costs come out well-balanced. Some state boards are going to find this easier to do than others, but I don't think it will trend out on left-right political lines.
- dankohn1 7y agoThe uniquely terrible US healthcare system succeeds in privatizing profits during most years but socializing losses, just like the finance industry in 2008-09.
- bogomipz 7y agoFrom the linked report("new analysis") referenced in the first paragraph: >"The potential impacts detailed in this report reflect what could happen absent decisive federal action. If these impacts are not mitigated, the public health and economic consequences to consumers, small and large employers and health insurers are potentially staggering, including: • Consumers and employees not getting needed testing or treatments due to cost barriers, both for COVID-19 but also for other health conditions. • Employers no longer being able to offer affordable coverage, or dramatically shifting costs to employees. • Consumers and employers no longer being able to afford coverage, leading to employer groups dropping coverage or individuals deciding to go uninsured. • Even more unsubsidized marketplace enrollees being priced out of individual markets. • Small insurers risk insolvency, and if they close, put covered consumers at financial risk, damaging competition that benefits consumers and the employers that purchase on behalf of millions of Americans. • Dramatic cost increases, many of which will be borne by the federal government in the form of higher Advanced Premium Tax Credits (APTC), or by both federal and state governments paying for increased Medicaid enrollment as individuals and employers drop coverage" Aren't almost all of these things not only already true but have also been true for years now?
- xenadu02 7y agoHealthcare can be the difference between life and death. It is very much unlike any other market good. It is also somewhat unique in that failure to seek early care often leads to much more extensive need of care later, and any imparement is a deadweight loss in human capital terms (unless you're a sociopath who thinks we need to clear out "surplus" population) A free market requires price discrimination to establish prices. By definition some people must be priced out of the market. There is no free market in healthcare that will deliver anything close to the correct care for the people who need it, and as mentioned delaying the purchase of care or substituting the wrong care is often the worst of both worlds. Health insurance is uniquely terrible: denying care is the quickest way to increase profits, and unlike fire insurance healthcare is needed by everyone at some point (most people never have their house burn down). There are some things the free market is bad at. Natural monopolies are one. Healthcare is another.
- cryoshon 7y agorising health insurance premiums will drag down any notion of economic recovery once the pandemic recedes, much like rising health insurance premiums led to the middle class being hard-pressed in the aftermath of the great recession. quite simply, there is no economy without consumer demand for services. and consumers who pay higher rents to their health insurance company have less money to spend. the money doesn't ever trickle back down into the economy once it is lost inside of the insurance system. nevermind that millions of people have lost their employer-provided health insurance after being laid off. for them, these discussions of health insurance premiums rising are a bit academic; there is no chance of care being accessible or affordable, even if the monthly toll of maintaining expensive insurance is rising astronomically. it's clear the the US healthcare system cannot continue in its current form. it is my hope that people will no longer entertain delusions of perseverating the present system. it's decidedly non-serious to consider that the ACA might be reformed further to keep the current system. the only true debates remaining are about how much of the healthcare system should be under the public's control, which we can boil down to two camps: above 70% public ownership, or above 40% but less than 70%. the former camp includes ideas like single payer and medicare for all, whereas the latter camp includes hybrid systems which are closer to switerland's or germany's systems.
- bogomipz 7y agoI'm not familiar with the 70% vs 40%. What are the significance of those two numbers in the context of healthcare reform debate in the US?
- a_c 7y agoSo...when the insurance company profits, they are not lowering premium. when the lose money, the ramp up premium. Sounds like a solid business
- mnm1 7y agoThis is unbelievably absurd. Insurance companies don't want to do their one and only job, paying healthcare costs, so they want a bailout from the government too. How much money are we going to pour into these useless entities before we just get rid of them altogether? How backwards does America need to be on this issue before there's a will to fix it? How many people need to die and go bankrupt over medical bills while insurance companies make 100% profit off of any premium raises? Is being the new epicenter of the global pandemic of the century not enough? The greed and cruelty is just unbelievable. So much for helping others when it really matters.