Will the health control legislation (HR 3590) encourage large firms to stop offering medical insurance? From CNNMoney.com (Fortune):
Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill's critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was ...
The Boston Globe reports:
Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts’ 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs ...
Economist Bryan Caplan asks: How Many Employers Will Stop Providing Health Insurance?
If preliminary summaries of Obamacare are true, it looks like individual health insurance will soon be a better deal than employer-provided health insurance. In the individual market, you can now wait until you're really sick to ...
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 ...
President Obama has wants empower the federal government to forbid insurers from increasing their premiums more than the authorities allow. Two reactions to this part of the president's health care proposal:
Don Boudreaux, Cafe Hayek on price controls:
What cool adventures await us if Mr. Obama succeeds in giving Uncle ...
Last week the Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by Newt Gingrich and John Goodman titled "Ten GOP Health Ideas for Obama." John Goodman is a great resource on health care policy, and I read his blog regularly. But this article is one example of how Republicans (given the article's ...
A Cato podcast on the insurance company price controls in the House and Senate health care bills:
As I summarized in a previous article, when government forces insurers to issue policies to high-risk customers (guaranteed issue), but to also charge the same premiums as they to lower-risk customers, bad things happen:
Insurers ...
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 ...
Typically profit-seeking companies try to sell products that their customers want. Not so with insurance companies when they must charge the same premium to high-risk patients as low-risk patients. Such a political control is known as "community rating." Michael Cannon explains an unintended consequence of community rating in Massachusetts:
Massachusetts long ...
Colorado SB 061 is a case of what is seen and what is not unseen. What is seen: fewer denied insurance claims (probably). What is not seen: increased insurance premiums and more people who cannot afford insurance.
The bill summary states:
For purposes of workers' compensation, property and casualty, and health insurance, ...
