Entries Tagged as 'Medical Cost Inflation'
9 January 2008 · Comments Off
You may have noticed that one recurring theme in my writing on issues such as universal health care has been my concern that nothing much has been done to at least review, and preferably reign in the rate at which medical expenses are rising.
A share of the burden for such a challenge rests on the shoulders of consumers themselves (heaven help us).
In a recent post at InsureBlog, Bob Vineyard coins a new term, “Phantom Insurance”:
It seems that consumers everywhere are complaining about the cost of health care and health insurance.
At the same time they are throwing away dollars like there was no tomorrow, buying phantom insurance and other ways to waste their money.[...]
Phantom insurance isn’t insurance at all. It is additional premiums paid for coverage that does not exist and a complete waste of money.
When consumers stop buying phantom insurance they can pocket more of their hard earned money and stop padding the coffers of the carriers.
There are several examples worth considering in Bob’s post.
I suppose that it’s futile for me to hope for some sanity in the whole system of medical care cost billing and utilization, unless normal folks start putting a little thought into how their own money is spent.
Tags:
Insurance · Health Insurance · Medical Cost Inflation · Universal Health Care
25 November 2007 · Comments Off
One of several major concerns I have in the public discussion surrounding universal health care is that many of the popular proposals we hear being floated focus on insuring the uninsured, without addressing the bigger problem: the fact that the costs of medical care are growing much faster than the overall rate of inflation.
It seems that I might not be alone in this thinking.
The New York Times has run an article discussing the challenge of enforcing Massachusetts’ mandatory health insurance laws. Included in the article is this observation:
But the reluctance of so many to enroll, along with the possible exemption of 60,000 residents who cannot afford premiums, has raised questions about whether even a mandate can guarantee truly universal coverage.
Additional concerns have been generated by projections that the state’s insurers plan to raise rates 10 percent to 12 percent next year, twice this year’s national average. That would undercut the plan’s secondary goal of slowing the increase in health costs.
“We’re going to be very aggressive in trying to get those numbers down to single digits,” said Jon M. Kingsdale, executive director of the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority, the agency that markets the subsidized insurance policies. “If we continue with double-digit inflation, I don’t think health reform is sustainable.”
Tags:
Insurance · Massachusetts · Medical Cost Inflation · Universal Health Care
