Most of its provisions have not even gone into effect yet, but according to Forbes there is solid proof that Obama’s health insurance reform is already working.
One of the major goals of reform was to reduce the number of people without health care insurance, and in the first quarter of 2011 alone at least 600,000 people were added to the health insurance rolls.
In fact, the department of Health and Human Services had estimated that reform would add around 1.2 million new people with insurance during 2011, but experts are now saying that number will be exceeded. Not only that, but most of these newly insured people are young and relatively healthy, which means that bringing them into the insurance pool should lower insurance premiums for everyone. And because those with health insurance are more likely to get preventative care like regular checkups, they will be healthier and less likely to require emergency care. Even if they break their leg and do have to go to the emergency room, their insurance will help cover that cost, instead of leaving it for the rest of us to pick up.
It’s a win-win-win-win! Insurance companies win because the number of people covered has gone up. We win because premiums are lower. Hospitals win because fewer people will be using expensive emergency rooms for health care. And America wins because our people will be healthier and more productive.
8 Comments
Wait a minute… you can’t really believe that Insurance Companies would actually ‘share’ their increased revenue by decreasing our premiums… do you?
I’m not familiar with insurance regulations, but unless there is a law saying that they must, it’s infinitely more likely that CEO salaries & bonuses will increase because of it.
Quick… somebody tell me I’m wrong.
I’m with Laurie. Unless there is a built in mandate to reduce premiums, it won’t happen. Hell they could reduce premiums right now, 6 months ago, 6 years ago. They didn’t because they wanted the profit.
The GOP should be happy too. Now Americans will be healthier as they approach their retirement at 80 years of age.
New York regulates the health insurance companies and watches their profits very carefully. That’s what blue states do.
I have never been without health insurance, even when we didn’t know where our next dime was coming from. Called “catastrophic” insurance now, it would not cover a broken leg, but it would cover a free check up and mammogram each Year. Personally if one of my relatives had a life threatening illness and the first 5K needed to be covered as the deductible, I’d kick in something. I don’t get upset about co-pays being raised (keeps people from seeing the doctor for sore throats)-its the top end I worry about. 1 or two million dollars.
Note that I did NOT say that insurance companies would lower your premiums, I said your premiums would likely be lower than they would otherwise be. Important difference — premiums have been going up dramatically for a while now, driven mostly by increased costs. If costs go down because of a larger pool, then your premium shouldn’t increase quite so much next year.
Of course, insurance companies could just keep increasing your premiums dramatically and keep the extra profit, but at some point they would price themselves out of the market, the same way that housing prices — which everyone said would keep going up and up — are no longer doing that in most places.
My small business premiums went up a whopping 19.1% this year. Apparently, 10% of the 19.1% was “trends”, something our broker said the insurance companies built in to “cover” their profits now that they are covering more people who were once deemed uncover-able in the past due to health issues.
In essence, without more regulations or mandates to reduce premiums, they will continue to increase the “trends” in order to show record profits. So unless they repeal it, true I can’t get dumped if I get cancer, but my premiums are climbing even higher now.
I’m not sure I buy it any more than I buy corporate tax decreases resulting in lower prices for consumers.
Somebody’s making more money for sure, I will just be floored if it winds up in my pocket!
“We win because premiums go down.”
On what f#cking planet is this statement true?
I’m with 1032 on this. I’m not sure if I buy it. We might of added 600k insurance peeps, but we are also adding more jobs to the economy, not all jobs=insurance coverage, but a good bit do