Old Babe,
If you have an individual health insurance policy, you will not be affected. However, if you are part of a small group benefit plan provided by a small employer (2-50), your rates will likely increase dramatically, or your employer may just drop benefits altogether, because it is just going to become much harder for these small employers to be able to afford the benefits.
You see, when you have community rating (the same rates for everyone regardless of age/health status) VS. rating flexibility in the group market, the insurance carriers are not allowed to assess risk by health status, so what happens is, they raise rates across the board to compensate for the lack of ability to statistically assess risk. Some insurance carriers simply drop out of the business of providing products for the small group market, because they feel it is too risky to try to come up with proper pricing without being able to underwrite (assess risk). The lack of competition in combination with the inability to assess risk properly only means one thing - HIGHER PREMIUMS FOR EVERYONE!
Sure some older and less healthy folks will qualify for lower rates while younger and healthier folks will pay more, but what good will that do if the small employer drops the benefit plan altogether because the bottom line is 20-50% higher than it was last year? Community rating in the small group market is NOT a good idea. The law of large numbers does not compensate for the risk in the small group market, because there aren't "large numbers" of members in the small group market, so community rating results in higher premiums for everyone.
Over time, you end up with a phenomena of employers either cutting back on their contributions (ie..charging more to the group members, deciding not to contribute towards dependents premiums, or dropping their benefit plans altogether). Even worse, the healthier folks, due to the higher pricing tend to look for better ways to cover their dependents (ie..in the individual market), thus resulting in a change in the overall health status of people who remain in the small group market; typically the unhealthier folks stay in, while their healthier family members drop out of the pool and obtain cheaper coverage in the individual market. It's a self-perpetuating phenomenon that leads to large rate increases year after year. When you combine that with the cost-shifting to the private sector that healthcare providers must continue to do year after year as their pay provided by the government for public programs such as medicare and medicaid dwindles, you end up with annual renewals of small group healthcare premiums ranging from 20-50%.
Please encourage senator Dave Shultheis to vote NO on HB 1355.
