Friday, June 26, 2009

Congress needs to put a moratorium on insurance company rates until they finish their debate!

This month, the Society of Human Resource Management published an article highlighting health insurance cost trends in 2009. It was demonstrated that increases during the time of the survey were already at 11%. At the time of the article, that 11% was expected to soar exponentially higher because of the new legislation requiring mental health parity, the expansion of COBRA, the threat of taxation on our health premiums, the discussions on national health care reform, and the new public insurance option debates. We hear about this everyday in the media and should be no surprise

Needless to say, we did not escape the increase. These issues, coupled with reductions in headcount below 50 and medical claims from 2008-2009, my employer received a renewal for our current plan at a 21.5% increase to take effect September 1st.

Monday, June 15, 2009

Obama's Health Plan

I seem to recall when the current administration starting pitching their ideas about a new health care system that current insured are paying the costs of emergency room care for the uninsured; that the reason our healthcare costs are so high and continue to increase is to pay for the costs incurred by hospitals and insurance companies for uninsured patients.

OK. I bought in. If we develop a health care plan for the uninsured it will be paid for by the insurance companies out of moneys we currently pay them for our insurance. Did I get this right? Actually, I thought it meant that our insurance rates would go down if there was a single payer insurance program and we may still pay for it but our rates would not go up to do so.

What did I hear you say, Mr. President? That to pay for your new plan you are going to add a new tax we have to pay? OK, I will buy into this but I expect you to regulate the insurance companies so my insurance rates go down. Problem is that I dont beleive you because I am not hearing anything in Congress about getting my insurance rates down. Rather what I hear is that they will stop going up AND I will get to help pay for this insurance program for the poor.

Funny how politics works? They get us to buy in by agreeing with us how bad it is. We get so excited and involved we are blindisighted and fail to notice the scam being pulled over our eyes.

Am I missing something hear? Was there something on C-Span I did not hear because I was on my 5 hour per day commute to downtown DC?