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Illinois healthcare insurance premiums increase up to 60%
Topic Started: Mar 8 2010, 01:07 PM (305 Views)
Axtremus
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HOLY CARP!!!
Link:

Chicago Tribune article

Quote:
 
Consumers in Illinois who lose their jobs and have no other option but to buy their own health insurance will get socked this year with premium increases of up to 60 percent, according to state records.


It's referenced in the POTUS' weekly address last Saturday (video).
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Big John
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At a certain point the "no socialized medicine" battle cry is going to have a rather hollow ring to it don't you think?






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Kincaid
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I'm guessing these rate increases are evidence of companies that feel they can't take the risk. The increases are certainly counterproductive to what they'd like to see occur.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
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Red Rice
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Kincaid
Mar 8 2010, 01:24 PM
I'm guessing these rate increases are evidence of companies that feel they can't take the risk. The increases are certainly counterproductive to what they'd like to see occur.
The insurance companies are as tone deaf as the big banks.
Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

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Big John
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Kincaid: they are increasing their premiums because they can.

I bet that the healthiest people invariably make the most money or have the best jobs. If I headed up an insurance company, I'd ask my board "Why should we even bother to insure the sick when the prosperous are a much bigger profit center and greatly enhance shareholder value?"

It sounds sarcastic, but I think it makes perfect business sense.





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Mark
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Once again, a state in the clutches of the democratic party.
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Big John
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Mark: you need to take a big step back and stop looking at things so black and white.

Both parties are the same. Neither one stands for anything different. Repubs don't lower taxes and Dems don't help the little guy. It's all a sham and you are buying into it hook line and sinker. Stop it now.





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Mark
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You think I am a supporter of the GOP? :spit:

Lesser of two evils is still evil.
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Copper
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Big John
Mar 8 2010, 01:40 PM

"Why should we even bother to insure the sick when the prosperous are a much bigger profit center and greatly enhance shareholder value?"

The correct answer would be to make more money.

But of course you start with the easy money.

What's wrong with that?
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jon-nyc
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Kincaid
Mar 8 2010, 01:24 PM
I'm guessing these rate increases are evidence of companies that feel they can't take the risk. The increases are certainly counterproductive to what they'd like to see occur.
I've read some discussion, not sure if its speculation or based on data, that many insurers are suffering from adverse selection due to large job losses in the economy. People lose their jobs, healthy people take their chances, sick people get individual plans, net result is average risk profile of individual policy holder worsens, hence average cost goes up.

Again I'm not sure how valid it is.
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Mikhailoh
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No, but it makes a lot of sense. I worked in health insurance for five years, and hav been involved for 25+.

Also, a lot of those people who are healthy and dropped individual policies are self-employed. Trust me - the self-employed business market is way, way down.
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Kincaid
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I'm not sure how valid it is either - but from my experience in the business, insurance seems to be driven mostly by number crunching accountants and actuaries. OTOH, Big John is right about insurers wanting to be profitable. Denying people with pre-existing conditions is one way to counter adverse selection. At the other end is competition, so they cut rates as low as possible in order to get business. In the middle I think is a huge amount of uncertainty as to what will happen, so I think insurers are raising rates as much as they can justify, scared that they are going to get locked into some money losing business.
Kincaid - disgusted Republican Partisan since 2006.
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Copper
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And fewer insured means less business for Doctors who have to raise rates to cover costs.
The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight, but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought best. Carlton McCarthy
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Mikhailoh
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Ever think maybe they want this bill to pass and that is why they are playing the evil insurance company? Now why would they want that?

(hint: read rest of thread)
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Axtremus
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Kincaid
Mar 8 2010, 04:10 PM
Denying people with pre-existing conditions is one way to counter adverse selection.
That is adverse selection, on the part of the insurance companies. :)
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Jeff
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Mikhailoh
Mar 8 2010, 05:08 PM
Ever think maybe they want this bill to pass and that is why they are playing the evil insurance company? Now why would they want that?

(hint: read rest of thread)
The left-wing FireDogLake analysis of the Senate bill (IRS tax mandate with no government "public" option) is that it is a government bailout of, not attack on, the health insurance industry, which otherwise has a decaying business model.
Edited by Jeff, Mar 8 2010, 06:02 PM.
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Improviso
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Jeff
Mar 8 2010, 05:24 PM
The left-wing FireDogLake analysis of the Senate bill (IRS tax mandate with no government "public" option) is that it is a government bailout of, not attack on, the health insurance industry, which otherwise has a decaying business model.

Nice way to prop up a decaying business model.
Quote:
 
The Senate health reform bill, which is the basis for Democrats' last best chance at comprehensive reform, would give the insurance companies millions of new customers required by law to buy health insurance. It would also require insurers to cover everyone, regardless of age, gender or pre-existing condition. To help pay for the new insurance requirements the government would give to people money to buy insurance - $336 billion over the next ten years. That money, ultimately, would have to go to... drum roll... insurance companies.
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Axtremus
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Well, that's the 3rd best thing after single-payer universal healthcare and public option.
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kenny
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The odds of coming out ahead by not being insured are improving.
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