Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

The Proactive Health Care Approach, Pt.13 – Simple arithmetic 201.

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Mr. Romney speaks of the ‘free rider’ drain. What Mr. Romney means by ‘free riders’ are those people without health insurance who show up in ERs, for lack of anywhere else to go. Many of these patients get treatment that way without paying (because they can’t). Truth is, this payment must come from somewhere. Turns out the cost is picked up by ‘the rest of us consumers’, by the government and, even ‘eaten’ by the budgets of benevolent hospitals who still provide that care for those without health insurance. Good news is, the ‘free ride’ expense goes away when everyone has health insurance.

There’s still more. Before the Massachusetts plan went into effect, the average premium cost for a healthy medium-aged person who had health insurance was $335 per month. But, since the plan has taken effect, those costs are down to a little more than half that. Even better, the health insurance benefits are twice as good. This ‘oz. of prevention’ is expected to yield a great savings in the long run by avoiding “acute -- and expensive -- conditions in the future,” as Mitt words it.

So let’s do a little more ‘arithmetic’. If mean health insurance premiums dropped to ‘a little more than half’, lets say 60%, then the ending cost of the current $7,000 plan would only be a mean of $4,200 per year. If we multiply this future rate by those needing full support, we get 4,200 times 17,400,000 we get $73,080,000,000 (or $73.1 billion).

That’s odd. What did we say were the available funds, back in Part 11 of this series? “It is estimated that somewhere between $70 and $75 billion will be readily available every year for a national health insurance/care system that covers all of these axioms.” And the beauty is, almost no one will see a tax increase. Maybe only one in a hundred Americans will. Maybe it’s just coincidence. ‘Arithmetic out the window’, Mr. Holtz-Eakin.

Continued…