On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 11:11 AM, Dan M<dsummersmi...@comcast.net> wrote:
> If someone pays for full ticket family health insurance with COBRA, the > price is about $12k/hear. If someone wants to buy insurance, there are a > number of possibilities. First, they can be a young person or a young > family with no history of significant illnesses, and can buy insurance for > slightly less than COBRA. Then, they can have had one of many instances. > For example, a member of the family might have had cancer, be diabetic, or > show any one of a number of risk factors. Then they look at the high risk > pool. I had an insurance broker who talked to me about this, and am in > contact with someone who has high risk insurance because his wife is a > diabetic. In those cases, you are talking about 40k/year, with a high > deductable for any coverage. > > The median family cannot afford this, since the median family income is > about 50k/year. > > It was clear that, with even modest risk factors, COBRA was the far better > option for me. I am happy that we were able to get on my wife's insurance a > few months later, and that we can still participate in a group plan. But, > if my wife doesn't get a call before COBRA runs out, one of us must get a > job with a company that has group health. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba653 | COBRA (the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act) is a | federal law that gives former employees the right to stay in an | employer's health insurance plan for up to 18 months. But the cost is | high: You have to pay 100 percent of the employer's premiums plus 2 | percent for administrative costs. | There may be cheaper alternatives to COBRA, especially if you have | no severe health problems. For example, a Dallas family of four with | both parents in their 20s could buy a preferred provider organization | (PPO) plan with a $2,000 deductible for a $4,680 annual premium. That | same family's annual COBRA premium would be closer to $13,000, on | average. If the family chose a $5,000 deductible, the annual premium | would be less than $3,500. Some of these plans also qualify for an | HSA, allowing the policy holder to set money aside tax-free to pay | medical expenses. You can contact independent insurance agencies to | compare policies or shop online at sites that compare prices, such as | http://www.ehealthinsurance.com. Some insurers even offer short term | medical "gap" coverage for people between jobs, retiring prior to | Medicare eligibility, or not yet eligible for company benefits and for | students about to graduate. > With health care costs going up, companies are dropping coverage. If we do > nothing, we'll go to a real individual free market. More market discipline in health care would be a good thing. Here is an example of how far we are from a real health care market where consumers evaluate costs and make decisions based on those costs: Kathy Gurchiek, "Consumers Savvier about Cost of a New Car than a Hospital Stay," Human Resource News , August 2, 2005. | A Harris Poll found that consumers can guess the price of a new Honda | Accord within $300. But when asked to estimate the cost of a four-day | hospital stay, those same consumers were off by $8,100! Further, 63 | percent of those who had received medical care during the last two years | did not know the cost of the treatment until the bill arrived. Ten | percent said they never learned the cost. There are precious few examples of market driven health care in the US, but here are two: “2005 Average Surgeon/Physician Fees: Cosmetic Procedures,” American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 2006; “1992 Average Surgeon Fees,” American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 1993. | transparent package prices covering all services are the norm. Even | though technological progress is frequently assumed to increase health | care costs, the real price of cosmetic surgery has declined over the | 1992 to 2005 period, despite substantial technological progress and a | six-fold increase in demand. From 1992 to 2005, a price index of common | cosmetic surgery procedures rose only 22 percent while the average | increase for medical services was 77 percent; overall, prices for all | goods increased 39 percent. H.T. Tu and J.H May, “Self-Pay Markets in Health Care: Consumer: Nirvana or Caveat Emptor?” Health Affairs 26, no. 2 (2007) | In corrective vision surgery, out-of-pocket payments and package | prices are the norm, and the real price has declined by 30% over the | past decade. When consumers make decisions based on out-of-pocket expenses, real health care costs can actually decrease. Dan M wrote: > In those cases, what > we'll have a continued expansion of the extremely inefficient way we provide > health care to those without the money to pay for it. As compared to the extremely inefficient system of mandated health care plans we currently have imposed on us by various governments: http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba523 | Mandates cover services ranging from acupuncture to in vitro | fertilization. They cover providers ranging from chiropractors to | naturopaths. They cover bone marrow transplants in New Jersey, | hairpieces for chemotherapy patients in Minnesota, marriage counseling | in Connecticut and pastoral counseling in Maine. | These laws mean that if people buy insurance at all, they must | purchase a bloated and expensive package of benefits designed by | politicians. They are forbidden to buy insurance that reflects their | own preferences, tailored to individual and family needs. A family of | teetotalers is thus forced to buy protection against alcoholism, even | though they neither want nor need such protection. A couple well past | child bearing years is forced to buy in vitro benefits they do not plan | to use. Catholics are forced to buy contraceptive coverage they find | morally objectionable. | As the Table shows, 11 states require insurers to cover marriage | counselors, four mandate coverage for naturopaths, three cover | midwives, 11 cover acupuncturists and four require coverage for massage | therapists. Other states have mandated such procedures as in vitro | fertilization (15 states), port-wine stain birthmark removal (two | states), and treatments for morbid obesity (four states). | Compared to the costs of barebones insurance, these kinds of mandated | benefits hike premiums considerably, thus pricing otherwise healthy | people out of the market. In fact, studies estimate that as many as one | of every four uninsured Americans has been priced out of the health | insurance market by mandates. | If mandates do so much harm, then why do they exist? Very few mandates | have been enacted because of patient pressure. Almost all are the | result of the lobbying power of special interest providers. And once a | state-mandated health benefit is enacted, it is almost impossible to get | it repealed. | Not all states have been equally bad at limiting consumer choice | and raising the cost of insurance. For example, people who live | on the Arkansas side of Texarkana bear only 24 mandated benefits; | whereas people on the Texas side must live with more than twice as | many. Overall, there are as few as 13 mandated benefits in Idaho and as | many as 58 in Maryland and 60 in Minnesota. Further, some states exempt | small firms (with fewer than 50 employees) from these regulations. _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
