As of right now we have a new law on the books, that is as soon as it is printed and issued in the Federal Register. That will take about 24 hours. We should all get a copy so we can start reading it. By the end of the month most of us should know what we and are children will be in for. I would hope that China is as glad about this as the Democrats so they will be kind enough to loan us the money needed to pay ourselves for this. There will be a lot of changes and I would like to analyse just a few.
First, preconditions. According to what I know so far, the insurance companies can "only" offer policies that include provisions determined by the government. This means that the cost for a 21 year old person will be the same as for a 61 year old person, even though the chance of a claim by each is very different. If this were auto insurance, it would mean that a driver who had many accidents would be charged the same as a safe driver. The claim is that our insurance rate would not change or would go down as a result of this legislation. If you understand 4th grade math, you know that this can not be true. If an insurance company is forced to accept people who they know in advance are going to have million dollar claims for the same fee as a healthy person, the insurance company is going to go out of business or have to increase rates for the healthy person. Like you and me. It is just that simple. I don't know what this is going to do to people and companies who are self insured. The only advantage that company self insurance plans have is that they only apply to their employees and their families. If you don't work for the company, then you are not covered. In many business health insurance plans the coverage of family members is optional or they have to pay extra. I think that you are going to see a lot of companies drop extended family health coverage or drop health coverage totally. In the case of self insured, it would seem to me that you could write any terms that you would want under this program and provide yourself 100% of those demanded by the new law. When you got sick, you could opt out of your self insurance plan and go buy health insurance from a regular insurance company. By law, they could not turn you down. See how screwed up this whole thing is? I don't know of any insurance company now who has enough reserves to cover preexistin conditions, so it the insurenace companies don't have adequate reserves, why should you as a self insured person have to have some kind of high reserves. Note also that insureance companies are under state law not federal law. This should be an interesting point to follow.
In a prior Blog, I explained how our government is the easiest place to "scam" or "game". If you think you have seen "gaming" of the government before, just wait. You ain't seem nothing yet. My prediction is that in the next couple of years you are going to see the innovation spirit swell in this country like you have never seen it before. In no time at all our government will have health care so screwed up that many of you will be thinking about going to Mexico for your medical treatments. The Mayo Clinic now has facilities in Mexico as do many other major medical providers. We may have to go to Mexico to get medical care that we can afford. You heard it here first. Some may go to India. Check out airline stock because they may be doing ambulance service to places like that in the not too distant future. Sad but true. I know I will have a lot of Blog meat with this one so stay tuned.
