Vincent K Blair Insurance Blog

The unintended consequences of the new health care law keep piling up... about 30 large corporations including McDonald's, and at least two unions, like the United Federation of Teachers, threatened to either raise premiums or drop health insurance  coverage altogether for their workers if they had to comply with it.  So what did the government do?  Exempted them from the new law, that's what! 

It's just another example of the hard truth that the new health care law does nothing to control health care costs and in fact will increase them. Read this article in USA Today to learn more.

This is a  good TIME magazine article on some unpleasant consequences of the new healthcare reform law.  To summarize, independent brokers and agents, as well as many small insurers, could be forced out of business when the full brunt of the law comes into effect in 2014.

The FDA is considering revoking its approval of the drug Avastin for use on women with advanced breast cancer.  True, the drug may only extend life by a few months but the precedent is disturbing, as this article from a British newspaper points out. Will the FDA become the 'death panel' detractors of the healthcare law warned us about?

Missouri voters spoke loudly and clearly August 3 when 71% of them voted for Proposition C, a state law which prohibits the government from requiring people to have health insurance or from penalizing them from paying for their own health care.

While several state legislatures have passed similar laws contesting the healthcare law's mandate to buy health insurance or else, and Virginia's attorney general has filed suit against it in that state, Missouri was the first state to put the question to the people.  It seems the battle over healthcare reform is far from over... it's just moved from the Congress to the courts.

During the healthcare debate, critics predicted that employers would drop their group health insurance plans and simply pay the penalty the new law laid out under the reasoning that it would save them boat-loads of money.  Seems big employers like John Deere and ATT are considering doing just that. Click here to read a Fortune Magazine article about this frightening development that will send healthcare costs soaring...

Some health insurance companies are enacting changes to their policies before the deadlines set by the new healthcare law.  Some examples:

• This month, major insurers will end the practice of "rescission,"  which involves going back and trying to find minor mistakes or omissions in applications when policyholders develop costly illnesses;
• Many insurance companies this spring will also start covering children up to age 26 on their parent’s policies – something they weren’t legally required to do so until September

Health insurers have also decided to cover children with pre-existing conditions, even though the new law contained a loophole the insurance companies might have invoked had they wished to fight the new requirement. 

There is one large caveat to this trend; large businesses which essentially insure themselves and only use insurance companies to administer their plans. These employers will not speed up implementation of the new requirements and indeed may increase premiums when they do.  Read more about all these health insurance developments in this article in the Washington Post.

Will the new health care law bring health care costs down? Not according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. According to chief actuary Richard S. Foster, total healthcare spending will increase by almost $90 billion over the next 10 years, not decrease, as the Obama Administration asserts.  Foster further predicts that about 14 million people would lose their employer coverage by 2019 as smaller employers terminate coverage, forcing their workers into Medicaid. 
       And remember: Foster's office  is PART of the Obama Administration! 

Not all affordable health insurance plans are created equal... in fact, some are downright scams, as this story from TIME points out. Expect to see more of these cons in the months and years ahead because of the requirement to buy health insurance by the year 2014...

If you don't have time to plow through all 2074 pages of the new health care law, here is a link to a summary and time-line of its major components.  The link will open up a new window to the website for the Kaiser Family Foundation, a non-profit organization and "a non-partisan source of facts, information, and analysis for policymakers, the media, the health care community, and the public." Even with this summary, which is pretty good, there are a lot of details still to be worked out that will have an affect on health insurance, so check this blog often for updates...

Folks, the confusion over the new healthcare law is increasing... for good reason:  it's an extremely complex law with phased-in elements stretching roughly from this September to 2014. Click on this article for a good summary of reaction on the "street":
"New Health Care Law Spawns Mass Confusion"