More Colorado employers are offering HSAs

The Denver Business Journal reports:

Twenty-seven percent of Colorado and Wyoming employers surveyed by MSEC recently said they now offer Health Spending Accounts as an option for their employee benefit plans, up from 21 percent in 2009, 18 percent in 2008, 15 percent in 2007 and 7 percent in 2006.

President Obama guaranteed Americans that after health reform became law they could keep their insurance plans and their doctors. It’s clear that this promise cannot be kept. Insurers and physicians are already reshaping their businesses as a result of Mr. Obama’s plan.

The health-reform law caps how much insurers can spend on expenses and take for profits. Starting next year, health plans will have a regulated “floor” on their medical-loss ratios, which is the amount of revenue they spend on medical claims. Insurers can only spend 20% of their premiums on running their plans if they offer policies directly to consumers or to small employers. The spending cap is 15% for policies sold to large employers. …

Restrictions on how insurers can spend money are compounded by simultaneous constraints on how they can manage their costs. Beginning in 2014, a new federal agency will standardize insurance benefits, placing minimum actuarial values on medical policies. There are also mandates forcing insurers to cover a lot of expensive primary-care services in full. At the same time, insurers are being blocked from raising premiums—for now by political jawboning, but the threat of legislative restrictions looms.

Read his whole article:
No, You Can’t Keep Your Health Plan – Insurers and doctors are already consolidating their businesses in the wake of ObamaCare’s passage.

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