The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the healthcare reform bill enacted into law earlier this year, continues to have its effects on the cost of healthcare. In Connecticut
The state’s largest insurer has been approved to raise health premium rates by 41 percent to 47 percent for some of its policies sold to individual buyers, in the largest price hikes yet seen in Connecticut since the adoption of national health care reform.
For all of its individual market plans, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has received approval to raise rates by at least 19 percent — including a range of 30 percent to 44 percent for the brand of plans in the individual market that was most popular in 2009, Century Preferred.
The reason for the increases is the new federal health reform mandates, according to Anthem and the state Department of Insurance, which is defending its approval against charges by Attorney General Richard Blumenthal. Those reforms took effect Sept. 23.
[…]
“There is not one person in the state of Connecticut who will see an increase in their current premiums based on what the department approved for Anthem and Aetna,” Sullivan said last week in response to Blumenthal’s letter. “The rates that were filed and approved reflect the current cost to deliver care and the impact of more comprehensive benefit designs required under the federal healthcare reform law. If the attorney general wants to complain to someone, he should be complaining to Congress.
The first half of 2010 was spent struggling over a healthcare reform bill and now we need healthcare reform more than ever.
“The reason for the increases is the new federal health reform mandates, according to Anthem and the state Department of Insurance”
Which mandates are they talking about? How many plans and what is the cost? They cite $1200/year. Is that after the increase? From the article.
“It is not clear how many people are paying, or will pay, these new rates because federal reform allows insurers to grandfather certain plans that existed before reform was passed in March. What it means for Anthem customers is that anyone who enrolled before March 24 will have the option of staying in their current plan, which would increase next year based on rising costs but not because the plan will have added benefits mandated by federal law. Anyone who bought an Anthem plan on March 24 or later will pay the new rates.”
It sounds a bit like the mini-med plans.
Steve
Found the requirements here.
http://xnet.kp.org/reform/index.htm
Yes, it will now requite that things like emergency care be covered.
Steve
$1,200/.3 = $4000. That’s the high end for these plans; the low end is $2,727. For a plan on the individual market, that’s incredibly cheap. I don’t think you can generalize from that kind of plan to the effects on the healthcare sector on the whole.
Steve,
I know you think this reform bill will do good, but you really are stretching here. Grandfathering? Really? Seriously? Sure it might mean that initially people wont have to pay higher rates but people switch plans, plans that were in existence cease to exist, etc. At best you are talking a slow move from the lower cost/older plans to higher cost/newer plans.
Maxwell,
Sure, but the point is the cost for those plans just went up a whopping 30% to 44% for the most popular plans and overall 19% when looking at all plans on the individual market.
Over at Reason.com they’ve been doing pretty decent on keeping track of how the ACA really isn’t going to be delivering on many of the claims that were made about it.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/08/19/liberal-health-care-activists
http://reason.com/archives/2010/03/22/the-lie-of-fiscal-responsibili
http://reason.com/blog/2010/06/28/deficit-reduction-doubts-obama
http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/12/cbo-adds-115-billion-to-obamac
A major reason for the “deficit reduction” in the ACA was the hits Medicare would take in terms of fees to doctors, but as Dave has pointed out Congress has never let those cuts take effect and each time they pass such legislation it means the cuts in the future get bigger, if you are to try and keep costs from rising.
The chief actuary for Medicare actually released his own report on how such things are unlikely to go through and that the “official” projections for costs are almost surely pure fantasy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/24/health/policy/24health.html?_r=1
Also, the IMF is thinking the “cost savings” included in the bill are rubbish.
http://reason.com/blog/2010/05/18/imf-joins-cbo-cms-in-expressin
So it isn’t like Dave needs to base his decision on just this. In fact, I’m pretty damn sure he’s not. This is just the latest datum to come floating into view.