Health Care Reform Polling data

[dgoldenz]

You say this frequently - people won't pay the unsubsidized rates. If they are covered today, those rates are being paid. How can we ever hope to have any type of functional healthcare system when people don't pay the full amount? How can we expect to reform a system if we don't acknowledge the real costs?

They are covered by paying individual market premiums. If you are paying $400 per month for your family and that rate goes to $1200/month for guaranteed-issue, what do you do? Most people covered under group plans have them massively subsidized by the employer or government. The total costs are distorted because people don't pay the full price of what they get, which encourages overutilization.

 

[M Paquette]

When I see poll results like this, I can't help but chuckle that the Great American People are going to get the results that they so richly deserve over the next couple decades, as employers continue to cut health care benefits for retirees and current employees. Losing the MegaCorp tax break for providing health insurance will help speed the process along...

A much larger body of under-insured or uncovered people will at least finally put some downward pressure on the cost of health care services. We may see some cost containment, or perhaps changes in the care model to reduce expenses.

 

[Independent]

I was only thinking there is too much cross subsidy right now. Higher rates for small groups and lower rates for large groups. The lower rate encourages over-use and hides the real cost. The higher rate discourages enrollment. The system becomes distorted.

Standard rates for all would be a big step forward.

Okay. I figured there wasn't any cross subsidy, it simply reflected the differences in anti-selection. I guess we'd need a health insurance actuary to tell us what's really going on.

 

[samclem]

Health Care brokers and intermediaries use the reform act as an excuse, but it is certainly not the reason. They were raising their rates before the reform and will probably continue to do so.

Medical costs are increasing, but the rate of increase is slowing. It will shock some to learn that the cost of medical care provided by government insurance (Medicare) is going up a lot faster than the cost of care paid for by private insurers.

From AOL News based on data provided by the US government's Centers fro Medicare and Medicaid Services

Indeed, as the chart below shows, annual spending increases have been steadily moderating for the past eight years.

And, the data show, these spending increases would have been lower still had the government kept pace with the private sector. Last year, for example, private insurance spending climbed just 1.3 percent. Medicare spending, in contrast, climbed 7.9 percent. On a per-enrollee basis, private insurance spending has climbed at about half the rate of Medicare since 2005.

Over the longer term, government health care spending has climbed faster that private spending in eight of the past 10 years. (See chart below.)

At the same time, premium increases have been steadily moderating over the past several years. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, premiums for employer-sponsored family coverage climbed just 3 percent in 2010, compared with 13 percent in 2002.

Now, I'm sure some of the lower costs for private insurance is due to burden-shifting to patients. But this would need to be balanced against the large amount of Medicare patient care costs that service providers shift onto those with private insurance.