The Health Reform Rumor Mill

[Post Quartermaster]

Hey guys, I'm a long time lurker over here (although haven't been around much in the last 6-8 months). I've gone through a bunch of the posts in the health reform forum - alot of good stuff......hopefully this hasn't been covered before.

Anyhow, more to my point, I was speaking to a sales rep at a TPA I use alot last week and he mentioned being told that GR/United was planning on a 20% rate increase on individual plans 10/1 due to the child pre-x law. Personally, our agency doesn't use United for Ind Med. here in SC so I haven't heard anything from them.

I generally don't pay much attention to grapevine stuff, but this guy is generally a pretty good source, so I figured I'd throw it out there to see what you guys had heard.



Interesting times in our industry.

 

[somarco]

Re: The Health Reform Rumor Mill....

Haven't heard anything yet but my personal opinion is children rates will start to increase this summer in anticipation of the Sept deadline and the increase will be a minimum of 50% and could ratchet up to 100% or more before it is all over.

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Re: The Health Reform Rumor Mill....

The legislation states children can't be declined. To me, that doesn't mean they can't still be underwritten. They can qualify for today's underwritten rates or if it's a decline only then do they go into the GI policy with the huge rate increase.

 

[Winter_123]

Re: The Health Reform Rumor Mill....

Haven't heard anything yet but my personal opinion is children rates will start to increase this summer in anticipation of the Sept deadline and the increase will be a minimum of 50% and could ratchet up to 100% or more before it is all over.

Could be a difference between requested rate increases and approved rate increases and where state approval is not required then the surprises begin. This industry is a federally regulated utility now, and moreso with each passing day.

 

[TXINSURANCE]

Re: The Health Reform Rumor Mill....

The legislation states children can't be declined. To me, that doesn't mean they can't still be underwritten. They can qualify for today's underwritten rates or if it's a decline only then do they go into the GI policy with the huge rate increase.

Every carrier I spoke with is going to pure GI on children, no exclusions, same rate for all this fall.

 

[Dave020]

Re: The Health Reform Rumor Mill....

Heard a couple of rumors this week (one is older) concerning impact of reform.

1 - Apparently they are going to cap CEO pay with the health carriers at $500k, anything over taxed 100%

2 - Aetna CEO Ron Williams is on record that 80/20 MLR goes into effect, Aetna will close IFP market

On a side note, Cigna crept back into California recently for IFP (after they snuck out like the Baltimore Colts a few years ago) and some agents on this forum have asked if I know/sell their IFP products (I won't go near them).

Now, get this. I heard that an agent in SoCal is being sued by clients because apparently Cigna forgot to negotiate an actual network in CA when they snuck back in and they cannot find a participating provider (doctor or hospital) in their area and had a large inpatient claim that is being denied. Yikes!!

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Re: The Health Reform Rumor Mill....

Yes, 500K cap on CEO pay....with 54 million in stock bonuses.

 

[Dave020]

Re: The Health Reform Rumor Mill....

Yes, 500K cap on CEO pay....with 54 million in stock bonuses.

Exactly!

The ironic part is how many times Ron Williams met with Obama while the dump truck was parked at the back door of Aetna taking out all of that money.

 

[somarco]

Re: The Health Reform Rumor Mill....

cap CEO pay with the health carriers at $500k, anything over taxed 100%

That could get interesting.

They did what they wanted with GM and even some of the banks. But once the banks paid back TARP money they had no leverage.

I don't see how they could pull that off unless they buy the company first. Singling out a particular industry for a special tax on pay would surely be challenged.

 

[Full Throttle]

Re: The Health Reform Rumor Mill....

I don't see how they could pull that off unless they buy the company first. Singling out a particular industry for a special tax on pay would surely be challenged.

For those who complain on here that some Democrats are unfairly labled Communists, how do you respond to this? Regulating what handful of individual CEOs in one particular industry can make, hard to explain that one away.