Raise Your Hand to Pay for Insurance You Don't Want!

Here are some interesting factoids about the impact of state "mandates" on the cost of insurance and other facts about the amazing efficiency of government health care . Aren't you glad government bureaucrats are making sure you have the insurance coverage THEY want you to have. Cause after all, they are smarter than you aren't they?

Raise your hand if you want to pay $850 higher health insurance premiums to cover in vitro fertilization ?

By kenhoma

Some interesting factoids from a noted Harvard professor …

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Through the Medicare and Medicaid programs and state government regulations, it sets the prices paid to providers, determines who is covered for what in its insurance plans, and requires that certain benefits are included in insurance policies.

But, some consumers may not want expensive ‘Cadillac’ health plans that pay for acupuncture, fertility treatments or hairpieces …

The government of Massachusetts, for example, requires 52 benefits, including in vitro fertilization, a benefit that raises the price of every family’s health insurance by $850 or so.

But, some consumers may not want expensive ‘Cadillac’ health plans that pay for acupuncture, fertility treatments or hairpieces …

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Despite the government’s regulation of the prices, coverage, and benefits in Medicare, the program has incurred a $38 trillion liability– a sum equivalent to nearly three years of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product.

The country’s 87 private insurers’ general and administrative expenses are 5 percent, a percentage lower than Medicare’s.

40 percent of doctors refuse to see Medicaid recipients due to its stringent provider payment rates. Increasingly, physicians refuse to see Medicare enrollees too, for similar reasons.

To compensate for the government’s shortfall in payments to providers, enrollees in private health insurance have been forced to pay about $90 billion more annually.

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Source: RCP, Government Should Get Back to the Basics on Health Care, August 22, 2009
Regina E. Herzlinger, McPherson Professor at Harvard Business School and author of “Who Killed Health Care?’(McGraw Hill, 2007)