Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

The Bush Sequel – Starring John McCain, Pt.5 -- the Storyline

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The next insight is offered by “Anne PME” Anne has nicely assessed a list describing what most of have learned either by experience or by observation. Here is her list: A. Individual health [insurance] plans are more expensive B. These plans typically cover less. For example, many of these plans do not offer dental or eye care. Why would any employee from a large company vote for someone who will let their employers take benefits (and HR leverage) away from them and replace them with lots of confusion and frustration? C. The latest trend in individual [health] insurance plans appears to be plans that cap out, exclude medical conditions that affect women at a higher rate than men…like pregnancy or the vast majority of autoimmune diseases like MS, RA and Lupus, or charge higher premiums to certain high risk populations like fireman and health care workers and students (these are the folks who need good health insurance because they are exposed to a lot of nasty bugs). Health insurers are not doing well these days…seems to be the individual policyholders’ fault that their stock (and options) are tanking…stock backdating and incompetent (or in the case of Wellpoint’s former CFO, obviously troubled) management are not the fault of the policyholder or the stockholder…we just pay (and pay, and pay) the bills. Less regulation and overwhelming certain state BOI’s without having adequate oversight and enforcement at the federal level and without giving the states the necessary resources to ramp up their offices will make for very unhappy state oversight agencies, very unhappy policyholders, and it may also lead to stockholder issues. This can lead to bad poll results. Look at Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage Plans. We’ve added huge entitlement programs without adding any resources for oversight and enforcement. According to his speeches, McCain would never run the war this way, and would never again allow an unorganized response to a natural disaster like Katrina, so it is surprising to see him making these types of health insurance proposals.