Costs Are Flat in Mass?

[Winter_123]

Health care in this country implodes in 2018. Legislation takes effect in 2014 and my guess is four years later the gov't announces with the end to subsidies or greatly reduced subsidies.

Four years of rate increases starting in 2014 will all end up in court when come 2018 it costs a family "$1,800" a month to buy coverage, which is mandatory.

We'll end up with universal health care within 10 years and I prefer universal heath care to the legislation that was just passed.

2014 and 2018 and all of that are somewhere over the rainbow. It is all crisis mode from here on out. The issue of rate increases or not is already at critical mass in many areas and there is no waiting until 2014 to see how that works out. The government thinks it did not need to deal with cost control in its utopian plan but reality is another matter and reality is at our door.

 

[Full Throttle]

Mandated coverage with higher premiums simply does not work. My personal prediction, it will go one of two ways depending who is in control of the legislature at that time:

1. John's scenerio described above, a "national plan" run by the government.

2. The government acts as the reinsurance support to the private health carriers for large claims (define that level however you like).

Neither one creates greater cost control without rationing, it simply transfers the costs from a private entity to the government (in effect, those paying taxes).

 

[stuy119]

Controlling the carriers does not control costs. It also doesn't address the overall health of the country which, unless addressed, nothing will work.

That's my big issue with all of this. At no point in time has anyone discussed how we can lower our rates of dread disease which is causing the majority of the large claims (and can be prevented).

Preventive care isn't going to the doctor so you can have a disease caught early and treated. It's avoiding the disease in the first place so you don't develop any issues.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Rationing, paying providers less and stifling innovation are the only way to bring costs down. The other is encouraging and rewarding personal responsibility. Problem is, you can't get elected on a personal responsibility platform. If you want fat people to vote for you then promise to cut the prices at the Golden Corral.

 

[Winter_123]

1. John's scenerio described above, a "national plan" run by the government.

We are there already. This year the industry became a public utility. Within a public utility model you have providers whose level of free market latitude may vary but make no mistake about who is in control. It is similar to MA's. You can argue that there are free market providers but that is only by permission of the government and they control the major ingredients therein.

Health coverage in the U.S looks like a big piece of swiss cheese if you hold it up to the light with over 50% already on a public option. Obama and company will just keep expanding and plugging until when you hold it up to the light it is almost all public plans.

As previously stated, the Candadian system is worse than what we have now, but better than the chaos that will and is resulting from obamacare and the risk of collapse leaving us worse off.

Oh Canada!
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The case in Maine is a real lu-lu. Frigging state just decided what the right premium increase should be without regard to any rules. Turns out the right increase was zero.

I actually misstated this and would like to correct the record in the unlikely event that any viewers are following the Maine case.

The state actually concluded that an 11% increase was the right number rather than the 18% that Anthem requested but in so doing the regulators stated that zero was the right amount of profit margin for Anthem because of its profit nationally via Wellpoint.

So consumers will end out with something that is not pretty and so will Anthem. If Anthem has fudged their numbers enough to give them some slack then they will be all set although this is the third year in a row that their requested rate hikes will be denied. The pisser for them is (as happened last year) is that people picket their corporate offices accusing them of gouging when they implement their watered down rate hikes.

As I said, the only way it works is if anthem has put enough slack in their numbers. Otherwise they are essentially working as an arm of the government now delivering services at cost, or at least you can see it from here.