UnitedHealthcare requests 16.8% health insurance rate hike from Ore. regulator
DCBS:
Rate Filing Summary
UnitedHealthcare Insurance Company
Small Employer Group Health Benefit Plan Renewal
The Oregon Insurance Division must approve the rates of all health benefits plans in the individual, small employer and portability markets.
Rate Request: Proposed rate increase: 16.8 percent from one year earlier. Effective date: 2/1/2011 Oregonians impacted: 14,068 (actual membership as of July 2010)...
Five-year rate history 2/1/2007: 11.8% Increase 2/1/2008: 11.8% Increase 2/1/2009: 14.1% Increase 2/1/2010: 14.3% Increase 2/1/2011: 16.8% Increase
Read the full article here. Discuss below.
|
Posted on Nov. 17, 2010
|
|
connect with blueoregon
8:55 a.m.
Nov 17, '10
Five-year rate history:
2/1/2007: 11.8% Increase 2/1/2008: 11.8% Increase 2/1/2009: 14.1% Increase 2/1/2010: 14.3% Increase 2/1/2011: 16.8% Increase
Sad thing is, it isn't this company that's the problem. And I have seen and expect to see no improvement via the so-called Health Care Reform. We're still just careening off the cliff.
The idea that individuals would be fined for not having medical insurance is abominable.
11:12 a.m.
Nov 17, '10
So you think people should not have to have insurance and simply go into an ER and get the most expensive, least effective form of health-care and the hospitals cost shifting it to you and me?
Odd.
But I do hope you remember the numbers you just posted so as the dreaded "Obamacare" begins to take effect, you will be honest with your GOP brethren and call BS when they falsely scream about how it has driven up health insurance costs.
11:34 a.m.
Nov 17, '10
I've been screaming about the medical industry, the medical insurance industry, and the increasing chunk it is biting of individuals and the nation for many many many years. As I have written on this site in the last couple of weeks or so, I think Obama lost a tremendous opportunity and would have done better to pull back entirely instead of forging ahead to a political rather than a real policy victory.
(It's a false dichotomy to offer only the choice of passed-along ER care, by the way. Yes, I believe forcing individuals under penalty of law to carry medical insurance is neither just nor justified. If I were as poor as I used to be I guess ..... well, I guess I'd be facing those penalties.)
12:06 p.m.
Nov 17, '10
How is it a false choice?
How is it neither just or justified to no longer allow people to pass the costs onto you and me because they refuse to carry insurance?
1:24 p.m.
Nov 17, '10
It's a false choice because those are not the only two choices. And people might "refuse" to carry insurance because they cannot afford it.
If the "rest of us" cannot afford their ER bills, then "we" need an alternative. Here's one: health clinics.
I also think there's something phony about making people buy insurance who don't need it. I made that choice for many years, and no one else paid my medical bills. I don't make it anymore but generally funnel $5,000 into the system for every $500 I might take out.
I know .... we're all living on borrowed time. I'm back to the "cost conundrum." IMO that's where much better answers lie, now foregone.
7:40 p.m.
Nov 18, '10
The experience in MA suggests expanding insurance coverage does not decrease use of the ER: http://www.boston.com/news/health/articles/2010/07/04/emergency_room_visits_grow_in_mass/
Also here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/databriefs/db38.htm
11:36 a.m.
Nov 17, '10
"The six largest investor-owned health insurance companies recorded huge profit gains in the third quarter of 2010 by spending a smaller share of premiums on medical care, purging unprofitable members and burdening consumers with higher cost-sharing limits. WellPoint Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc., Aetna Inc., Humana Inc., Cigna Corp. and Coventry Health Care Inc. made combined profits of $3.4 billion in the three months ending Sept. 30, a 22% increase over the third quarter of 2009, according to an analysis of company filings by Health Care for America Now (HCAN)....
In 1993, the leading health insurers used about 95 cents of every premium dollar on actual health care. By 2007, after years of mergers and acquisitions that put much of the U.S. population under the control of a handful of for-profit companies, investor-owned health insurers had jacked up premiums and lowered the medical-loss ratio to around 81%."
ACA will require that they spend at least 85% on actual health care in the future.
4:20 p.m.
Nov 17, '10
And once again when they go into the ER when they do need medical help, then we all pay for the most expensive, least effective form of healthcare delivery.
This isn't "false" it is what actually occurs.
And in the passed reforms, those who legitimately cannot afford it, are then eligible for either subsidies to purchase it or made eligible for medicaid.
And how are those paid for, where you would not have the same cost shifting issue for those who refuse to carry insurance?
How so? Who are you claiming doesn't need insurance, the young and healthy? That is the basic structure of insurance, that those who when/if they need it are covered predominately by those who are not sick. This is the basic premise of risk pooling and at the very core of what insurance is. I thought you said you actually worked in the insurance industry?
4:21 p.m.
Nov 17, '10
Oops. That was supposed to be in reply to Sally's post of 1:24 p.m.
Mea culpa.
8:55 a.m.
Nov 18, '10
If you want to prevent people who "refuse to carry insurance" from shifting their costs onto "the rest of us," then let them pay their own medical bills. I agree that is not politically viable, in any way.
But the honest way to force people to contribute to societal needs and good is taxes. Add an HCR tax to the FICA tax. That would be honest and within government purview to do.
The premise of risk pooling is to spread the cost of risks that will strike some people but not all. That works, in principle, for major medical expenses but certainly not for office visits and the like. It would be like having auto insurance for your oil changes and tune-ups. Medical insurance is largely a misnomer these days.
The two major problems of the American medical system have been poor access for some, unaffordability for many, and the fact that the nation at large spends twice what other industrial countries spend per capita for health benefits significantly less good.
Aren't we paying for a limousine and riding in a bus?
I don't like this so-called Health Care Reform. It was premature and abandoned Obama's first principles.
4:43 p.m.
Nov 18, '10
That is the status quo, and that is not what happens now.
I am all for a single-payer (or at min a public option) and glad to see you would be open to that as well (if I read your suggestion of adding HCR tax being added to FICA correctly).
5:55 p.m.
Nov 18, '10
I was an advocate of single-payer medical care for many years. A piece in The New Yorker last year, that I posted for Karla Axton on another thread, made me rethink my single-mindedness about that, in view of other ways of morphing the composites of the American system into different workable forms rather than being wedded to one which posed serious political and logistic difficulties.
I definitely believe that everyone (or every citizen) should have access to the medical care they need, and (importantly) that it needn't and must cease to consume so very much of our GDP.
7:59 p.m.
Nov 18, '10
There is an interesting analogy you can draw with police officers. Law enforcement is generally treated as an unambiguous public good. When police respond to a request they do not check your ability to pay first. But also unambiguous is that they do not work for you as an individual, rather they work for the “public”. Their actions may be extremely contrary to your own interests, even if you are the one who requested their presence.
What would truly public healthcare look like? I think it means more then clinics...