Health.Net Pays Fine for Rescissions, Workers' Health Insurance in Jeopardy, and Medicare-for-All?
Welcome to this edition of the Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup. Today we will look at three interesting stories that cover a few different topics revolving around health care or health insurance. The first story is a continuation of the rescission stories we covered previously, in which California took several insurance companies to task for rescinding customers' health insurance policies for pre-existing conditions and various other factors.
Recently, Health Net agreed to pay $3.6 million in penalties as well as $14 million in reimbursement charges for medical expenses. Health Net is also reinstated the health insurance policies of nearly one thousand people whom had their policies cancelled after they got sick while under their coverage. The agreement with the state also prevents the company from dropping clients in this manner in the future, and also prevents the company themselves from being targeted for more enforcement in the future.
However, Health Net might be forced to pay another $3.6 million in fees if a follow-up examination finds that the company didn't fix all of their deficiencies. They also agreed to make changes to their forms, processes, agent training and more in the wake of all this scrutiny so it hopefully doesn't happen again. During all this, however, Health Net admitted no wrongdoing what so ever. Personally, I feel that paying the fines involved is its own admission, and I'm hoping that this never happens again to anyone, but only time will tell. It is a victory, however, for individual health insurance customers, so that's a very positive thing.
The next story comes to us from the Kansas City Star and is entitled, "Workers' insurance outlook unsteady." In this article, author Diane Stafford cites a study from The Employee Benefit Research Institute which stated that the health insurance outlook for employees this year looks uncertain and unstable due to rising fuel and food prices. Due to the higher prices of these necessities, the study says that these factors could start a drop in the number of workers that can afford health insurance even through their employer.
The report states that the amount of insured individuals who are insured through their employer dropped from 2000 to 2006, from 68.4 percent to 62.2 respectfully. While it's been fairly stable over the last year or two, there is concern that these numbers will drop as individuals and families make hard decisions as to what they can and cannot afford. Hopefully this won't be the case, but with the economy in the state it's currently in, it's hard to say how such high prices will affect the numbers of insured individuals and families around the country in the future, but it's definitely something to keep an eye on.
Our final story comes out of Washington University of St. Louis. According to Merton C. Bernstein, their leading health insurance expert, believes that Medicare is the most practical health insurance platform to provide health insurance coverage to everyone universally. "Medicare has been on the job for more than four decades and has resolved hundreds of practical problems that any large-scale health program must address," says the professor states. He then looks at both the Democratic and Republican plans and basically shoots them both down. For the Democrats, he states that Obama's plan would increase costs by $60-$120 billion dollars, while McCain's plan is a "political non-starter" due to opposition to elimination of employer tax breaks.
According to Bernstein, "We must move to a system that reduces per capita costs and pays for expanding coverage from those savings, and that's where Medicare-for-All shines." Savings will be had by simplifying insurance, as only one set of reimbursement rates will be needed. "Our economic situation requires that we pursue less wasteful policies; reducing health care costs that exceed what other developed nations spend heads that agenda," Bernstein, and it sounds pretty sensible. Only time will tell how widely supported this idea becomes, however.
That concludes this edition of the Weekly Health Insurance News Roundup. I hope, as always, that you've found the stories here interesting and informative. May you have a happy and healthy day, and we'll see you next tine.
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