With Health Insurance Costs rising by Double Digits, whom do we Blame?
Health insurance has always been pretty expensive; but how much would you feel health insurance costs have climbed up over the last 10 years? The official figures say that our premiums today are twice what they used to be in the year 2000. Why, our health insurance costs have mounted by almost 20% over just the last month. Those who opposed the health-care reform law are likely to seize on how expensive premiums are today and put the blame on the law. The insurance industry though knows that health-care reform has nothing to do with it. It is barely the same thing as always – the cost of care is climbing and there are too many people who need care.
The severest hit has been small businesses around the nation. Take New Hampshire, for example. In the health insurance industry, the Live Free or Die State is known as about the healthiest in the land. And still, the insurance market here can be rather hard for small businesses to manage. Nearly every private employer in the state is of the small business variety they employ no more than 40 or 50 employees each, for the most part. These sorts of businesses have a real trouble when their premiums rise and when they have few options. Any company with 20 workers in this state has absorbed an additional 20% in health insurance costs this year; any company with fewer than 20 employees has absorbed a 60% increase. It is simply an unbelievable sort of effect to put on small businesses. Naturally, the health insurance companies do not know what to do themselves – hospitals charge that practically more for their treatments these days.
You could somewhat attribute a trifle of the increase to the new healthcare law. For example, the new law demands that hearing aids and autism be covered. That makes health care more pricey for all. And then, the new law requires that preventive doctor visits the coverage as well. That adds an additional percentage point. However, there is nothing in the health-care law that could cause the kind of skyrocketing costs we’re seeing (or the shrinking coverage). There are people with good jobs and health insurance coverage which skip essential medicines for heart ailments or blood pressure nowadays because they cannot afford the deductibles.
In three years, every state will have a central market where consumers can merely go and sign up to deal with health insurance companies as a group. That ought to try prices down by some percentage points.
