Law Now Mandates Insurance Companies Actually Pay for Healthcare
Today, the Department of Health & Human Services issues
the rules of what insurer expenditures will – and will
not – qualify as a medical expense for purposes of
meeting the requirement.
As it turns out, HHS isn’t screwing around. They
actually mean to see to it that the insurance companies
spend what they should taking care of their customers.
Here’s an example: For months, health insurance brokers
and salespeople have been lobbying to have the
commissions they earn for selling an insurer’s program
to consumers be included as a `medical expense’ for
purposes of the rules. HHS has, today, given them the
official thumbs down, as well they should have. Selling
me a health insurance policy is simply not the same as
providing me with the medical care I am entitled to
under the policy. Sales is clearly an overhead cost in
any business and had HHS included this as a medical
cost, it would have signaled that they are not at all
serious about enforcing the concept of the medical loss
ratio.
So, can private health insurance companies manage to
make a profit when they actually have to spend premium
receipts taking care of their customers’ health needs as
promised?
Not a chance — and they know it. Indeed, we are already
seeing the parent companies who own these insurance
operations fleeing into other types of investments. They
know what we should all know – we are now on an
inescapable path to a single-payer system for most
Americans and thank goodness for it.
Whether you are a believer in the benefits of single-
payer health coverage or an opponent, mark this day down
on your calendar because this is the day seismic shifts
in our health care system finally get under way.
If you thought that the Obama Administration chickened
out on pushing the nation in the direction of universal
health care for everyone, today is the day you begin to
understand that the reality is quite the contrary.
If you believe that the end of private, for-profit
health insurance is some type of nefarious step towards
a socialist society, then you might want to attend
church this Sunday to mourn the loss of health insurers
being able to worm out of covering the bills of a cancer
patient because she forgot to write down on her
application that she had skin acne for three months when
she was a teenager.
Of course, those of you who fear the inevitable arrival
of universal health care really shouldn’t be too
fretful. There will always be a for-profit health
insurance industry for those who want to pay for it. The
only difference will be that those who cannot afford
private coverage will also have an opportunity to get
their families the medical care that they need
Everyone wins-except the for-profit health insurers.
I can live with that.
— RICK UNGAR
Excerpt from Forbes.com (December 2, 2011)
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rickungar/2011/12/02/the-bomb-buried-in-obamacare-explodes-today-halleluja/
