AP: Health Insurance Is Twice Inflation Rate

[question everything]

AP
Health Insurance Is Twice Inflation Rate

Tuesday September 26, 10:13 am ET
By Kevin Freking, Associated Press Writer


WASHINGTON (AP) -- Workers won't find much comfort in the smallest increase in health insurance premiums since 1999. The 7.7 percent increase this year was still more than twice the rate of inflation.

"To working people and business owners, a reduction in an already very high rate of increase just means you're still paying more," said Dr. Drew Altman, president and chief executive officer of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care research organization that annually tracks the cost of health insurance.

Altman said the rising gap between premium growth and wages is particularly startling when one takes a longer look back. Since 2000, health insurance premiums have gone up 78 percent; wages 20 percent.

(snip)

The rising cost of health insurance is one reason that employers are finding it an increasingly difficult benefit to give their workers. Since 2000, the percentage of firms offering health benefits has fallen to 61 percent from 69 percent. This year, however, the deterioration appeared to stop, particularly among small businesses.

(snip)

http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/060926/insurance_rising_premiums.html?.v=3

[burythehatchet]

1. Healthcare is a bigger ripoff that any scam Halliburton could

put together.

[Captain Hilts]

3. Many people are UNDER-insured and don't know it. nt

[burythehatchet]

8. And don't forget the "screw-you" factor

the tactics that many companies are using to (not) process claims are immoral, unethical, and should be illegal. The consumer has absolutely no protection in this racket.

[skids]

2. Depends -- which inflation rate.

The CPI? Hah!

Health care is about at the real inflation rate.

[question everything]

6. Interesting observation: is the cost of health insurance

included in calculating inflation?

[lovuian]

4. The prices are out of control

and it can't keep going like this!!!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Certainly true in my case

My insurance premiums doubed between 2003 and 2006. I had to raise my deductible to nearly useless levels to be able to afford coverage.

[question everything]

7. Do you have Medical Flex or Health Savings accounts?

I think that HSA payments can be deducted from your income, together with health insurance and all medical expenses that are above 7.5% of your gross income.

And then you can pay for your deductions from your HSA account.

This is the main problem: while employers can deduct their total payment for employees' insurance, and employees' premiums are done with pre-tax dollars, those of us who pay for our own can do so only with expenses that exceed 7.5% of our income.

[Tyler Durden]

10. None of that should be necessary.

There wouldn't be more than 1500 carriers of heath coverage (at last count) if it didn't make money hand over foot.

PLEASE can't we be socialists???

[question everything]

11. You don't need to be socialist to have access to health care

a basic right, like public schools, for example.

You have it all around the world in Canada, Great Britain, France, Germany - none of these considered socialist..


(not that there is anything wrong with being socialist, at least under certain conditions - a separate topic that I have been thinking of raising..)

[Tyler Durden]

13. Just a dream I've had since High School.

Not Communism, just some nice, healthy socialism.

[liberalhistorian]

15. And that's not even counting the fact that

most insurance coverage doesn't cover everything and that co-payments and deductibles are now at horrendous, unaffordable levels, especially for major treatments. And even after they receive (often substantial) payments from insurance companies, hospitals and clinics are notoriously aggressive as far as collecting the remaining amounts due. VERY aggressive. Doesn't matter if you don't have it, or if you have barely enough to cover basic expenses and little more, they want it, they demand it, and they will find a way to get it if they have to take whatever little you have.

It's enough to make you truly ill, if you can afford to get ill nowadays. I'm uninsured right now, so I sure as hell can't afford it and I pray that nothing major happens before I have insurance again.

[question everything]

17. One reason is that most hospitals cannot turn away people with no

insurance. In many cases they are homeless or are very poor.

So if you cannot squeeze them, you have to go after the ones with at least a steady paycheck, perhaps even own a home.

And, of course, the reason why hospital costs are so high for the uninsured is that they wait until their condition really worsens. And here is your catch 22.

It is obscene that HMOs are traded on the stock exchange and that their CEOs get millions for... cutting expenses, of course. I don't have problems with doctors making good money; after all, our beating hearts are in their hands. But to have so many paper shufflers making money while many doctors are being squeezed out of the profession, especially the ones who still accept Medicare patients, is absence.

[Megahurtz]

22. Doctors and Clinics are BAD,

if you have insurance but cannot afford the deductable they will just refuse treatment.

What a cold and oppressive Country we are now living in.:(

[liberalhistorian]

23. And if you don't have insurance, good luck

getting a doctor to accept you as a patient, unless you can cough up big wads of cash upfront. That's why so many uninsured people have to use the ER for non-emergencies, they simply have nowhere else to go.

My previous doctor back in Ohio made the mistake of selling his office to a corporate health care company in the misguided belief that it would give him more time with his patients because he'd be spending much less of it on the administrative and management stuff that he hated. Boy, was he ever proved wrong. Patients he'd had for years suddenly weren't accepted because they either didn't have insurance or didn't have the right kind of insurance, people had to pay a huge sum upfront EVERY time they came to the office even if they'd been coming there for years, the first and foremost concern of of the front desk gatekeepers was money, money, money.

He was really disgusted, left the office he'd founded and built up over the years, and started a new one where he didn't have to deal with the suits and their anti-patient bullshit. A lot of his patients left his old office and joined him at his new one, and he will never, ever do anything like that again. He was furious when he saw what they were doing to patients in regards to money, but there was little he could do because he wasn't in charge anymore. Well, he is now, and he's happily told the suits where they could go and what they could do when they got there.

Too bad more doctors don't follow suit, so to speak. because the vast majority won't accept you without insurance unless you pay a big hunk of cash upfront at every single visit, which most people simply don't have.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. I priced HSAs

Higher premiums for less coverage PLUS the need to set aside a certain amount per month to make it work. The tax deduction would be nice, but with my uneven income, I can't handle the upfront expenses. I may consider it if I become able to sustain about $500 more of monthly income over the long term instead of just sporadically.

Tax breaks are meaningless if you can't afford the upfront payments needed to qualify for them.

[haele]

20. HSA's are good for people with mild chronic or dental issues...

If you know you're going to need regular doctor's visits, lab work, kid needs braces, etc...and you have a decent existing employer provided insurance with a low enough deductible that you don't have to shuffle between meals and bills each month.

Having a tax-free kitty to pay for those things are nice.

But HSA's are useless if you don't make enough to pay for more than basic medical (emergencies and one doctor's visit a year), if there's any change in condition or if there's an emergency, even if you have decent insurance.

HSA's don't make it any easier for insurance companies to cover you, either. The dirty secret is that if they know you have one, they have a tendency to figure you're going to need to use them, as it were. Which means, the scummier companies will assume they're going to see some charges they might not want to cover anymore and raise your premium, deductibles, or drop you. It won't happen in California, but it can and supposedly has happened in states where medical insurance coverage is as much "at will" as jobs are.

Haele

[tularetom]

9. Hah - I wish it was only twice as much

I've been retired for 6 years. My medical premiums have almost doubled in that time. Fortunately my employer pays my share but I still have to pick up my wife's and even though she's on a medicare supplement plan her premium is almost as high as the two premiums were when I retired. Oh yeah - my COLA's since retirement are less than 20%.

[ShockediSay]

12. It's the Insurance Companies Stupid nt

[shrike]

14. Health care is a privilege, not a right

Medicine is a privilege, not a right. I saw both of those statements on an MSN message board and almost fell off my chair.

[Vinca]

16. The poster of that nugget will change his tune when he loses his. nt

[Tyler Durden]

19. I would LOVE see that selfish person....

...unemployed and sick.

On second thought, I wouldn't wish that on my ex-wife.

[Megahurtz]

21. I have a high-deductible insurance plan

with a high monthly cost.:banghead:

What a rip-off! It would be way cheaper just to pay-as-I-go.

[PurityOfEssence]

24. Medicine for money is murder

There are so many better ways to provide health care, but the ideologues demand that "free enterprise" and the profit motive must be the dynamic of EVERYTHING.

Don't like malpractice suits? Why attack lawyers, why not attack insurers?

Want employers to bear the burden of health care? That's just silly. Who pays for the uncovered? You do.

Ever had a REAL emergency? I have, and collapsed on the floor in a waiting line of others who were there for uncovered and less urgent treatment. They should have coverage and I shouldn't have had to endure that extreme joy, protected as I am by a decent health policy.

THIS SYSTEM DOESN'T WORK. The profit motive doesn't work for everything. Socialized Medicine is the only way; even a psychotic asshole like Richard Nixon knew that.