Instead of more political meddling in insurance markets like guaranteed issue and community rating, the following free-market-oriented reforms would help alleviate the problems with pre-existing conditions. From John Goodman at the Health Affairs Blog:
Encourage Portable Insurance.
Allow Special Health Savings Accounts for the Chronically Ill.
Allow Special Needs Health Insurance.
Allow Health ...
This week the Denver Business Journal and the Denver Post reported on Colorado's new federally subsidizes high-risk pools ("GettingUSCovered"). But there's a good reason to be concerned about quality and access. The Hill reports:
The Obama administration has not ruled out turning sick people away from an insurance program created by ...
My latest article at Pajamas Media begins:
If you dislike your health insurer now, just wait until politicians impose price controls that make your insurer act like a slumlord. Expect worse customer service, skimpier plans, and more claim denials.
Price controls on rental properties encourage ...
Writes Paul Hsieh, M.D. in Pajamas Media:
Controls breed more controls. The seemingly innocuous “reform” of requiring insurers to cover all pre-existing conditions would merely set the stage for ever-tightening controls until liberal Democrats achieved their long-held dream of a complete government takeover of health care — ...
John R. Graham of the Pacific Research Institute offers a great critique of Nicholas D. Kristof's recent New York Times column. Kristof relates a distressing story about a John Brodniak, who lost his job due to illness, exhausted his COBRA benefits, and ended up on Medicaid. Yet, Kristof reaches an ...
Section 211-213 of HR 3962 basically says that insurance companies must offer coverage (guaranteed issue) and charge the same premium (community rating) to everyone regardless of their medical history. The November 8 Daily Camera (Boulder, CO) printed my brief opposition to such political controls:
Should government force you to pay more ...
Paul Hsieh, MD has written a review of how a free market in medical insurance would address customer concerns about how changes in health status can effect premiums and insurability. He of course mentions health status insurance as an example. My favorite part of the article concerns how rights connect ...
From the Associated Press:
The health insurance industry offered Tuesday for the first time to curb its controversial practice of charging higher premiums to people with a history of medical problems. The offer from America's Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association is a potentially significant shift ...
As I noted recently, health-status insurance could be a free-market solution to making sure you'll have medical insurance when you need it, even if you get sick. Ronald Bailey provides a good review of John Cochrane's policy analysis here at Reason.com.
I cannot remember wanting to cheer and applaud after reading a policy analysis. But this is how pleased I was with a new Cato Institute Policy Analysis by University of Chicago finance professor John H. Cochrane:
Health-Status Insurance: How Markets Can Provide Health Security.
In short, health-status insurance addresses what worries people ...
