In other news, water is wet

[ziggy29]

Insurers Raise Health Bills Average 20%, Kaiser Says (Update1) - Bloomberg.com

Insurers Raise Health Bills Average 20%, Kaiser Says

June 21 (Bloomberg) -- Americans buying their own health insurance face an average 20 percent increase in premiums, driving some toward cheaper plans with fewer benefits, according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

...

“Health insurance premiums are rising because medical costs continue to soar and because younger and healthier people are choosing to drop their insurance during a weak economy,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, an industry group based in Washington. “That’s driving up costs for everyone else.”

IMO, this shows that the penalties for not carrying insurance need to be much stiffer. They weren't stiff enough to get the young and healthy to play along in Massachusetts and I'm afraid the federal penalties come 2014 won't be stiff enough, either. It's my opinion the financial penalty for an uninsured individual should be at least the same as it the lowest-cost policy available for a person of that age. That eliminates the incentive to opt out and pay the penalty.

 

[kevink]

This phenomenon is also called the "California Death Spiral." There was an excellent column about this in the NY Times awhile back:

Op-Ed Columnist - California Death Spiral - NYTimes.com

Penalizing the young and fit who chose not to participate is one strategy; then again we could just join the rest of the civilized world and cover everybody.