Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

No Right to Adequate & Affordable, Pt.2 – The ‘Objects are closer…’ mirror.

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Notwithstanding that these people have already paid their ‘dues’ from the days they were young and healthy yet stayed in the shared-risk pools, the health insurance industry could care less about that.  The health insurance provider will simply rewrite next year’s contract (and they can) to reflect new rates based on the average risk of the new higher-risk pool.  In and of itself, this is not good.  But the much more ominous domino has yet to fall.  When employers are faced with these substantial health insurance plan hikes (of which they pay about 82% for individual plans, 75% for family plans) many, if not most, will just have to opt out of offering the benefits anymore.  It’s already bad enough that they’ve bore the brunt of a 202% increase (more than double) in employer cost over 10 years.  (For the in-depth story on that, please refer to the article series entitled:  “Employer-based Health Insurance more than Doubles”)

As far as the $2,500/$5,000 tax credit advantage Mr. McCain is promoting, there is a ‘smoke and mirror’ scheme being presented.  Mr. Reinhardt has a lot to say about that.  The premise of saving American consumers on health insurance, illusion is that this is to stay.  However, this is simply not the case.  It will be short lived.  What we are not told by McCain, Palin nor the ‘Straight-Talk’ website is the fact that this tax credit only keeps up with our nation’s CPI (Consumer Price Index).  This ‘cost-of-living’ adjustment is only around 3%.  The first-time-ever tax Mr. McCain is placing on the consumer’s health insurance is running around 9%.

Continued…
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