News and talk radio was abuzz about recent statements from three of the largest health insurance carriers.\u00a0 In public announcements designed for maximum exposure, UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, and Humana let it be known that regardless of the future of the Affordable Care Act, they would continue to allow young adults to remain on their parent\u2019s policies until the age of 26.\u00a0 UnitedHealthcare and Humana also said they would no longer impose lifetime benefit limits on their policies.\u00a0 So what happened? And why the announcement now, right before an anticipated Supreme Court decision?<\/p>\n
There are two general explanations for this change of heart, and neither of them credits the large companies with generosity or altruistic motives.<\/p>\n
Hardcore supporters of Obama\u2019s health care reform policies see nothing but a PR conspiracy.\u00a0 Activist group Health Care for America Now (HCAN) released a near hysterical statement on their web site under the headline of \u201cDon\u2019t be fooled by the big insurance companies\u201d.\u00a0 It says in part:<\/p>\n
\u201cThis didn\u2019t happen out of the goodness of the insurers\u2019 hearts. This isn\u2019t about corporations doing the right thing. And it didn\u2019t happen now, just a few weeks before the Supreme Court announces its ruling, by coincidence. This is a PR offensive. The coordinated announcements by three of the five biggest health insurance companies is a cynical tactic\u2026\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n The problem with this explanation is that is grounded in ideology rather than reality.\u00a0 Groups like HCAN don\u2019t believe companies should make any profit at all offering health insurance.\u00a0 Their agenda will not be fulfilled until health care is free for everyone and administered by the federal government.\u00a0 So of course they see the motives as sinister and driven by greed.<\/p>\n Others see more reasonable business calculations at play in the announcements.\u00a0 It is considered more likely than not that the Supreme Court will throw out at least part \u2013 if not all \u2013 of the Affordable Care Act.\u00a0 But that doesn\u2019t mean that the need for healthcare reform goes away.\u00a0 It just means Congress will need to look at different solutions.\u00a0 If Romney wins the Presidency and Republicans take full control of Congress it is almost certain that a more free market approach to reform will be explored.\u00a0 The voluntary concessions put forth by the insurance companies happen to touch on many of the most popular aspects of the Affordable Care Act.\u00a0 \u00a0So instead of changing their minds the big insurers may be sending a message \u2013 this time we want to be seen as part of the solution instead of the problem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before the Affordable Care Act, insurers didn\u2019t allow young adults to stay on their parent\u2019s policy into their mid-twenties and they didn\u2019t offer unlimited lifetime caps. Now some favor both. What happened?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":182,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":349,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions\/349"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.online-health-insurance.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}