Politics & Current Events
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NC Students' Insurance Premiums Increase under "Obamacare"
The "Obamacare" was in the headline from CNN.
"I want the left to know they screwed with the wrong guy."
-This signature may or may not have been selectively edited.
Re: NC Students' Insurance Premiums Increase under "Obamacare"
I haven't read the link, yet. I noticed last night in several of the DNC speeches they referred to the PPACA as Obamacare. It struck me as odd. Maybe they're trying to "take it back" and give it a positive spin now?
Sorry. Thinking out loud.
Directly from the article:
In other words, it's because health care costs have risen and the insurance company needs to recoup the cost of claims. It's because of the increasing cost of health care that our country needs to do a better job of making sure Americans have ways to pay for it.
The article does acknowledge, and rightly so, that the PPACA has increased coverage for prescription drugs, including birth control. I'm sure the college students are taking advantage of all that free whoring, too. Still, better that they're preventing.
Meh. The article itself says that the Obamacare regulations requiring more drug coverage and preventive care only account for 12% of the increase. The other 88% was done at the insurance provider's discretion after "reevaluating the claims from the last year and a half". (It's too bad we didn't get a public option.)
It also says that chances are they would drop back down in 2014 after the program was implemented and that many students would now have cheaper plans available to them from their parents or through a state plan after the program is implemented.
I don't think insurance providers are above raising prices far beyond necessary and informing the public before the election in hopes it will help get Romney elected.
What about this part-
"Most of the cost increase, however, is due to adjustments in coverage by the university's insurance provider, Chartis, after the company evaluated claims experience over the last year and a half."
Eta: oops, didn't see W2N's response.
But wait, weren't the major insurers supportive of ObamaCare because it gave them more customers? They made a few deals and went along with it. There wasn't the wholesale revolt like in 1994 with Hillary and Magaziner's plan.
Huh? What is your point?
You don't have to be snotty. The prior poster mentioned that she wouldn't put it past the insurers to adjust rates to help Romney's election.
This is what I was referencing.
Most of what I've read suggests that while there hasn't been the push back that a public option or universal health care would have created, the companies are still hoping it's repealed. They will have more customers, but it also increases the regulations placed on them and the coverage they must provide. Not to mention, it is a small step closer to joining the rest of the Western world in public health care.
Higher healthcare costs, higher premiums. Pretty simple. If they don't change the cost of premiums to offset some of the ever-increasing costs of healthcare, they become insolvent and then they cannot cover anything.
Insurance is still, at its core, a business, so this is one of those unfortunate things about it.
Source? I work in insurance and Obamacare-lovers are the minority around here, believe me.
They can't just do that, dude. lol. They just... they just can't.
ETA: I mean to say, rates cannot be adjusted willy nilly and without damn good reason. There are regulations in place to stop this very thing from happening. Your ass gets the smackdown if you don't follow regs to the letter.
I didn't mean just up them willy nilly. I meant in the reports that are coming out estimating what the cost will rise to after the ACA is implemented, I wouldn't be surprised if they were throwing out the numbers from the highest end of the spectrum to emphasize the cost of Obamacare to people(voters) who already have coverage.
It's a tin foil hat conspiracy, for sure. Even if I'm 100% wrong on that, I stand by the rest of my post.
Hmmm... I'll have to get back to you on that as I gain more experience in this new position I just got.
My head is spinning from all the "don't EVA try to pull this shitt"s I am learning.
I do know insurance companies have been consistenly losing money for quite a few years now. Crappy economy, rising healthcare costs, high turnover rate in certain areas of employment because they cannot afford to keep competent people on their end of the phone (they keep leaving for higher-paying companies). You get what you pay for, and for what they can afford to pay for CSR, claims and other divisions that assist the general public, it often isn't much.
Congrats on your new position! I look forward to learning more from your perspective. :-) I'm definitely not nearly as familiar with the insurance and health care industry as you are.
No they haven't.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/14/business/14health.html
The nation?s major health insurers are barreling into a third year of record profits, enriched in recent months by a lingering recessionary mind-set among Americans who are postponing or forgoing medical care.
The UnitedHealth Group, one of the largest commercial insurers, told analysts that so far this year, insured hospital stays actually decreased in some instances. In reporting its earnings last week, Cigna, another insurer, talked about the ?low level? of medical use.
Yet the companies continue to press for higher premiums, even though their reserve coffers are flush with profits and shareholders have been rewarded with new dividends. Many defend proposed double-digit increases in the rates they charge, citing a need for protection against any sudden uptick in demand once people have more money to spend on their health, as well as the rising price of care.
Also:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-05/health-insurer-profit-rises-as-obama-s-health-law-supplies-revenue-boost.html
Insurance companies spent millions of dollars trying to defeat the U.S. health-care overhaul, saying it would raise costs and disrupt coverage. Instead, profit margins at the companies widened to levels not seen since before the recession, a Bloomberg Government study shows.
Insurers led by WellPoint Inc. (WLP), the biggest by membership, recorded their highest combined quarterly net income of the past decade after the law was signed in 2010, said Peter Gosselin, the study author and senior health-care analyst for Bloomberg Government. The Standard & Poor?s 500 Managed Health-Care Index rose 36 percent in the period, four times more than the S&P 500.
Still, the companies saw their average operating profit margins expand to 8.24 percent in the six quarters since the overhaul became law, compared with 6.88 percent for the 18 months before it was passed.
Quarterly earnings per share from continuing operations between the third quarters of 2008 and 2011 jumped 29 percent, and the results have on average beaten analyst estimates since the first quarter of 2009. WellPoint, based in Indianapolis, raised its 2011 earnings forecast in October after third-quarter earnings of $1.77 a share beat by 10 cents, the average estimate of 20 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
I work in property-casualty. Our losses have been brutal.
ETA: And holy damn on that article. I learned something today.
And I stand by what I said in the "you get what you pay for" aspect. They keep hiring shlubs to replace the shlubs who quit or were let go for poor quality work. Customers continue to receive subpar customer service.
I admit I am not as familiar with healthcare as property/casualty. But we're feeling the strain here. Lots of layoffs, firings, and starting salaries being much lower than they would have been previously.
Oh OK - I thought we were just discussing health insurance.
Premiums have been increasing for years before the ACA came into effect, so I don't know how you can say that an increase was "because of the ACA."
Oh, we were. I thought the losses applied to health too, but it would appear I have been misinformed.
because it was quoted in their increase note
Another reason I'm in favor of real universal health care instead of universal access to health insurance. Why pay a middle man?
Well, it's convenient to have a scapegoat, no? They couldn't really admit to, say, just wanting to make more money?