Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Those Worst Off, Pt.5 – The long and winding road.

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The major major (redundancy intended) hurdle at the federal level will certainly be getting a health insurance bill through Congress that has any resemblance to the original purpose of the bill that was introduced. This largely comes down to the monumental task of health insurance ‘affordability’. So here we go, back to the troubled victims in the middle; not poor, not rich. These people don’t qualify for the health insurance subsidies and can neither afford the premiums nor their lack of comprehensive benefits. According to Mr. Popper, for every three persons that are eligible, two of them will not sign up. The Times’ article describes many of the residents’ views on these policies as being both, “unaffordable and intolerably restrictive.”

For these unfortunates who are turned away from all the conventional (‘commercial) health insurance companies for ill-health purposes, the state sponsored route is rarely a quick one. A waiting period of going without health insurance is imposed for nearly all of them. This waiting period can extend for as long as a year, in order to get into a state pool that will cover the problem health condition.

That’s not all. Due to fiscal restraints, many other restrictions are placed on these state programs in order for a person to get enrolled. Consider the populous state of Florida. Here, they have a looming figure of 3.8 million residents who have no health insurance. Florida has such a state pool program as this, but has kept it closed to any new enrollment for the last 17 years! That’s almost a generation!

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