Our Health Policy Matters

Did the Supreme Court save private health insurance, or just drive another nail in its coffin? Ironically, it might well turn out to be the latter. Keep in mind that from a consumer perspective, much of the Affordable Care Act was about trying to keep private insurance affordable in America.  But “affordable” is a relative term.  When your employer pays most of the cost, insurance is a lot more affordable than if you’re paying the bill yourself.  At over $20,000 per year for a typical plan providing family coverage, health insurance now costs around 40% of the median household income of $49,445! Being mandated to take on that expense – even with the generous subsidies ACA provides – understandably rankles people.  It’s no wonder that millions of healthy people may still choose to roll the dice and go without. But even though we have spent so much time arguing about the cost of insurance and the private insurance market, the fact is that it pay...

Did the Supreme Court save private health insurance, or just drive another nail in its coffin? Ironically, it might well turn out to be the latter. Keep in mind that from a consumer perspective, much of the Affordable Care Act was about trying to keep private insurance affordable in America.  But “affordable” is a relative term.  When your employer pays most of the cost, insurance is a lot more affordable than if you’re paying the bill yourself.  At over $20,000 per year for a typical plan providing family coverage, health insurance now costs around 40% of the median household income of $49,445! Being mandated to take on that expense – even with the generous subsidies ACA provides – understandably rankles people.  It’s no wonder that millions of healthy people may still choose to roll the dice and go without. But even though we have spent so much time arguing about the cost of insurance and the private insurance market, the fact is that it pay...

The recent heavy-handed action by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida (BCBSFL) to terminate and amend all of its contracts with mental health providers brings to light a well-kept national health care financing secret. It is an American myth that we rely on private insurance companies to finance our healthcare delivery system.   America’s privately-financed private health insurance companies pay so small a share of the nation’s healthcare bill today that they could vanish tomorrow and we would barely notice anything but the cheering. Insurance companies have been marginalizing themselves by years of short-sighted actions against both providers and patients. They are well on the way to becoming little more than bundles of administrative costs and profits. And it may already be too late for them to do anything about it.  According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), our total U.S. health care expenditures in 2009 were just under $2.5 trillion...

The recent heavy-handed action by Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida (BCBSFL) to terminate and amend all of its contracts with mental health providers brings to light a well-kept national health care financing secret. It is an American myth that we rely on private insurance companies to finance our healthcare delivery system.   America’s privately-financed private health insurance companies pay so small a share of the nation’s healthcare bill today that they could vanish tomorrow and we would barely notice anything but the cheering. Insurance companies have been marginalizing themselves by years of short-sighted actions against both providers and patients. They are well on the way to becoming little more than bundles of administrative costs and profits. And it may already be too late for them to do anything about it.  According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), our total U.S. health care expenditures in 2009 were just under $2.5 trillion...