Health Insurers Seek More Money Every Year
Here is the title of the article in a recent WSJ : “Health Insurers Seek Big Premium Increases”. Why do they seek this money? Because why not? Another WSJ article on the same day is called “Health Care is This Year’s Surprise Winner”. Don’t you get it? They always win. They always gouge us. They always seek reasons to raise their rates and no one can stop them. Don’t believe me? When I googled the first WSJ to get the link I found these:
- HEALTH INSURERS SEEK BIG INCREASES IN THEIR PREMIUMS …(2016)
- More Health-Care Insurers Seek Big Premium Increases – WSJ (2015)
- Health Insurers Threaten To Increase Premiums, Even As Profits Soar (2013)
- Health insurance costs rise again | Star Tribune (2012)
- Health Insurers Seek Higher Premiums – The New York Times (2011)
- Health insurers seek rate hikes, citing new reform law – The Denver Post (2010)
And you can keep going as far back as the internet takes you:
Nothing changes. It’s a scam. The insurers cry and we give in. They ARE the problem. They are the middlemen. We need catastrophic, cheap plans only with a safety net for people with chronic diseases. The rest of the plans suck and they, with the insurers who sell them, need to go away.
well, what in the world happened in 2014???? no request for increases???
Need to find that one
Oh God, I’ve been saying this for years. ObamaCare was not the problem, the insurance companies were! Rates have been going up since time immemorial, and they are experts at blaming everyone else. Get rid of insurance companies (Oh my – maybe a single payer???) and all the slosh in the system for marketing, middle managers, nurse nay-sayers, and exorbitant executive salaries, and things might actually turn out OK…
Stephen, that is hilarious…
1. Feds get involved with health care in another FDR nanny-meddle with wage caps.
2. Feds institute Medicare/Medicaid at a time when private insurance was largely for catastrophic purposes, and very affordable.
3. Cost overruns with the Killer M’s have been through the roof, and even an attempt to slow the rate of growth (and not actually cut it!) is met with predictions of “killing millions.” Just ask the U.S. Senate.
4. The Obama Administration worked with Big Insurance, cut them sweetheart windfalls, and tried to use the “risk corridor” mechanism – thankfully blocked – to give even bigger windfalls.
5. Rates HAVE been going up, because of corporate greed yes, but greed codified, protected, and encouraged by the very government bunch that you want to put in charge of all health care.
6. Those that want single-payer tend to think of health care as a right – I view any such “right” as insulting, dehumanizing, bound to fail, and utterly immoral. Look at all the system slosh that just Medicare and Medicaid have created both within their systems, and as a bureaucratic harmonic in Big Insurance.
ObamaCare damn sure was the problem, making the problem of Big Insurance corruption even worse. Wake up!
America could have healthcare which astonishes the rest of the world in its skill and efficiency; and yet be less expensive to patients than much of the rest of the world. The biggest reason that we don’t is that we won’t dedicate ourselves to it.Industrial-size healthcare produces factory-quality output. Smallcare – the realization that there is nothing more important in healthcare than placing maximum effective competence at the bedside – is the only thing that matters.
Healthcare in America is an aggregate of things, most of which detract from the mission. It is a backbone of the FIRE industry (finance, insurance, real estate.) It is a make-work program. It is a government toy.
We do not care that “special interests” are the only ones interested in what goes on at the bedside. Insurers, pharma and the AHA are merely street gangs. They traffic in what the people want but are to ashamed to admit it.
The tip of the spear of smallcare is direct primary care. This, and its specialty congeners, are the equivalent of the edge contacting the whetstone when sharpening the knife. Nothing else much matters in knife sharpening; and nothing else is as important as smallcare, DPC.
The public wants to be angry, angry and punitive, towards the perpetrators of this healthcare debacle. If the public really wanted the additional small effort to coordinate their DPC rather than just carrying a plastic card imprinted with the name of a mighty god – Cigna or Universal or Aetna – and imagining it to be an instrument of magic – the whole thing would become fine within a few years.
American healthcare decline is but a symptom of America’s decline.
A society that wants to be cared for is not one that wants to be free.
As long as the Republicrat uniparty is beholden to millions given by special interest groups like insurers, pharma, and the AHA, I would not expect any change. After all, you get what you pay for…