Are State Governments Helping or Hurting Affordable Health Insurance Access?
Hello, and welcome to this edition of the Health Insurance News Roundup! This week we have a lot of ground to cover. Several state-specific articles from Pennsylvania, Florida, Iowa and California will be looked at today to show what those states are doing to help with the health care crisis, as well as how what is happening in these specific states can affect the entire nation as a whole.
A couple of well-written articles about uninsured Pennsylvanians could also be seen as a microcosm for similar problems facing people all over the country. In an article entitled, "Number of uninsureds hits alarming level" in The Signal Item, author Nick Kotik takes a look at the difficulties surrounding attaining affordable health insurance whether you have a job or not. The article focuses on the lack of affordable health care options even to those who have a job, and how the state's house has recently passed a bill that would allow residents access to affordable health care. The Pennsylvania Access to Basic Care -- or PABC -- grants insurance access to over 80,000 residents and gives businesses extra money to help defray the costs of health insurance.
In an article in The Beaver County Times entitled, "Congratulations, grad: You're now uninsured," author Michael Pound discusses how many college graduates are surprised when their health insurance provide by their parents policies suddenly ends. In Pennsylvania, a graduate is no longer considered a dependant, and therefore isn't eligible for coverage by their parents. This leaves many graduates suddenly without any kind of health coverage at all, which is very risky. The article discusses options for new graduates, such as COBRA (the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act), short-term health insurance plans that cost little, but also provide little in the way of real health insurance, or the other options of getting a "stop gap" job to fill the gap until a graduate gets a full time job, like one graduate in the article who got a job at Starbucks. These articles show that Pennsylvanians, as well as Americans all over the country, are struggling to get affordable and cheap health insurance that doesn't eat too much of their disposable income.
A little while ago we discussed Florida's recent legislation to have companies begin to offer affordable health insurance policies to state residents. According to an article in The Palm Beach Post entitled, "Blue Cross Selling Cheap Health Policies," author Phil Galewitz discusses how Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida have already begun offering cheap health insurance plans to customers beginning last fall. The policies -- which range from $24 to $59 a month -- are bare bones in the strictest sense. They only allow $50 of doctor or dental visits and $5 to $15 of prescription drug costs. These are also the first policies they have offered without hospitalization coverage. This adds new meaning to the term, "you get what you pay for." So far Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida has sold around 1,000 subscriptions to these inexpensive policies, but the question remains as to what happens when or if customers with these affordable health insurance plans maintain a serious injury or illness. Since these policies are so new, we will have to wait and see in this regard.
Moving onto Iowa, the Heartland's Institute Health Care News, in an article entitled "Iowans Likely to Reject Health Insurance Mandate," author Jon Miltimore discusses how a new bill in Iowa mandating nearly all children have some form of health insurance faces an uncertain future. The bill states that, by January 1st, 2011, parents would be required to show proof of insurance for their children. While this bill passed the state house overwhelmingly, it's now meeting quite a lot of resistance from legislators and advocates. Local representative Dave Heaton believes the mandate isn't needed, as "97 percent of our children are covered." He's also worried about the quality of coverage that would be offered under such a plan, and feels it might be compromised to cut costs. Doctor Robert Stewart feels that the mandate could have unintended consequences such as rising costs in the future. Whatever the case, we will keep an eye on this developing story in the future.
Our final state-centric piece of news focuses on California. As you may recall, some large insurers in the state such as Health.net and Kaiser Permanente were under scrutiny by local agencies by discriminatorily dropping customers due to pre-existing conditions. Now, according to a story in Dogflu.ca, both companies have been ordered to reinstate the health insurance policies of over 1,200 individuals we were previously stripped of their coverage. Kaiser was also fined $300,000. This is great news for costumers who were unfairly treated by these companies, and I hope this shows other companies not to mess around with people's coverage.
So a mixed time period on the health insurance news front, with both good and bad news permeating the headlines. In the bad news, the plight of the uninsured finding affordable and cheap health insurance continues, while in the good news, some can already get affordable health care, and some are getting their previously ended health insurance policies returned to them. Overall, a busy time in the health insurance world, and I'm sure it will remain so as such divisive topics continue to be unsolved. We will keep an eye on this topics each week and bring them to you as best we can. Until next time, have a happy and healthy day.