Thread: Controlling Health Insurance Costs

The L.A. Times

Congressional Democrats have begun pushing legislation giving government regulators greater authority to block big increases in health insurance premiums, kicking off what is expected to be a years-long process of revising and expanding their major healthcare overhaul.



The move, which comes less than a month after President Obama signed the healthcare legislation, is aimed at giving all states the power to stop premium hikes deemed excessive and allowing the federal government to step in if the states don't act.



"This is a gaping hole in our regulatory system, and it is unacceptable," Senate Health Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) said Tuesday as he opened a hearing on the proposed change to the healthcare bill, the first since the legislation was enacted.



Responsibility for regulating insurers has traditionally fallen to the states, but insurance commissioners' ability to control rate hikes currently varies widely from state to state. Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill, backed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, are exploring ways to standardize that authority.

If this isn't a good idea of the kind of idiotic policies we are going to see in the future, then I'm reading this wrong, but I suspect we'll see this become the status quo. The fact is, as was pointed out in another thread, that the Democrat Health Care bill will do nothing to prevent the cost of health care from going up. It merely changed the relationship between the US Government and health care consumers, by essentially making them partners. Over the next ten years we will all get to see what that relationship looks like. The first of two likely realities we will face is that the Government will try to reduce their own "costs" by capping rate hikes, which will have the same effect as the Nixon/Ford/Carter oil policies. We'll have national health care shortages. The second problem we'll face is that the government will no longer be able to afford to allow Americans to make health decisions felt to cause increases in the price of health care. All these stories you are hearing about how the government would like to see voluntary reductions in sugar and salt are merely a prelude to the government passing laws or issuing orders that define just how much of these substances Americans are allowed to have.



This one bill will be viewed as the largest assault on American Liberty in the history of our nation.

The New York Times

Fearing that health insurance premiums may shoot up in the next few years, Senate Democrats laid a foundation on Tuesday for federal regulation of rates, four weeks after President Obama signed a law intended to rein in soaring health costs.



After a hearing on the issue, the chairman of the Senate health committee, Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa, said he intended to move this year on legislation that would “provide an important check on unjustified premiums.”



Mr. Harkin praised a bill introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, that would give the secretary of health and human services the power to review premiums and block “any rate increase found to be unreasonable.” Under the bill, the federal government could regulate rates in states where state officials did not have “sufficient authority and capability” to do so.



The White House offered a similar proposal in the weeks leading up to approval of the health care legislation last month. But it was omitted from the final measure, in part for procedural reasons.



Reviving the proposal on Tuesday, Mr. Harkin said: “Rate review authority is needed to protect consumers from insurance companies’ jacking up premiums simply because they can. Protections must be in place to ensure that companies do not take advantage of current market conditions before health reform fundamentally changes the way they do business in 2014.”

Yep. It begins.

[quote name='Inkslinger' date='23 April 2010 - 05:08 AM' timestamp='1272013713' post='142653']

I support regulation.

[/quote]



I'll remember that. I'll make sure you get as much information on all the wonderful consequences that comes with it.

[quote name='Inkslinger' date='23 April 2010 - 05:08 AM' timestamp='1272013713' post='142653']

I support regulation.

Didn't your Mom ever smack your hand for taking too many cookies from the cookie jar?

[/quote]





I support regulation and common sense reform. Its the common sense that Congress seems to lack. I DO NOT support the government controlling profit. I would support more of a back door approach like a profit 'cap' with over the 'cap' dollars going towards the uninsured.....or something like that.



It may sound the same, but to me it is very different and still incentivizes competition.



However, that being said, Congress should not attack the profits of one industry and leave oil industry alone!! I mean wtf? And then that opens a whole other can of worms.

[quote name='Inkslinger' date='23 April 2010 - 05:22 AM' timestamp='1272014577' post='142661']

Just look at all the consequences we got without it.

[/quote]



In a few years we'll have to compare and contrast.

has anyone ever noticed that evertime the government starts to fix something



the taxpayers take it in the ass

[quote name='Inkslinger' date='23 April 2010 - 05:46 AM' timestamp='1272016019' post='142669']

Yeppers!

I said that years ago about our illegal invasions of the ME.

That was a definite ass rape...

[/quote]



and yet you support the government, and everything they do?



or is it just Obama you support and everything he stands for..irregardless of the outcome?