BuckeyeBlog

Some in Ohio are pushing for legislators to pass a law mandating insurance companies cover autism therapy. California has such a law, and it has just been dramatically expanded by court order:

In a preliminary ruling, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James C. Chalfant found that Kaiser Permanente’s refusal to pay for a child’s autism treatment because the provider was not licensed by the state runs counter to California’s Mental Health Parity Act. That act requires insurers to cover care for mental and behavioral problems at the same levels they do for physical illnesses.

So let’s see: the state enacts a mandate that insurance companies cover autism treatment. Insurance companies must raise rates on everyone to cover such a treatment. These higher insurance rates paid by Californians go to pay for treatments by unlicensed therapists and may not even work (at all).

Ohioans would be wise to reject any calls for an autism insurance mandate. As California is showing, it will merely raise the cost of insurance and will probably do little to help autistic children.

(h/t to the always brilliant Marginal Revolution)

Not very, according to this article:

Health insurers, in fact, ranked below many other industries in profitability, including other health sectors, according to the latest Fortune magazine rankings. While pharmaceutical companies were the third-most profitable industry last year, with a 19.3 percent profit margin, health insurers ranked 35th, with a 2.2 percent profit margin. Health insurers also ranked lower in profitability than medical products and equipment makers, pharmacies and medical facilities.

Those who say the profit motive destroy health care in this country are ignorant not only of basic economics but also the health care marketplace. Many health insurers and health care providers are non-profit organizations. And even those health insurance companies that are for-profit don’t have very high profit margins. Even if the federal government confiscated every dollar in profit made by health insurance companies it would do almost nothing to reduce overall health care spending.

In a conference call with religious leaders, President Obama said there was a lot of misinformation in the health care debate. That’s true. Of course, much of that misinformation is coming from him. As Michael Tanner points out in the Orange County Register, the claim that people will be able to keep their insurance if they like it just isn’t true:

…under Section 59(B)(a) of HR3200, the bill making its way through the House, and Section 151 of the bill that passed out of a Senate committee, every American would be required to buy health insurance.

And not just any insurance: to qualify, a plan would have to meet certain government-defined standards. For example, under Section 122(b) of the House bill, all plans must cover hospitalization; outpatient hospital and clinic services; services by physicians and other health professionals, as well as supplies and equipment incidental to their services; prescription drugs, rehabilitation services, mental health and substance-abuse treatment; preventive services (to be determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United States Preventive Services Task Force); and maternity, well-baby, and well-child care, as well as dental, vision, and hearing services for children under age 21….

If your current health insurance doesn’t meet all those requirements, you won’t be immediately forced to drop your current insurance for a government-specified plan. But you would be required to switch if you lose your current insurance or “if significant changes are made to the existing health insurance plan.”…

Seniors, too, could lose their current coverage, at least the 10.2 million seniors currently participating in the Medicare advantage program. That program offers many seniors benefits not included in traditional Medicare, including preventive-care services, coordinated care for chronic conditions, routine physical examinations, additional hospitalization, skilled nursing facility stays, routine eye and hearing examinations, and glasses and hearing aids But the House bill cuts payments to the Medicare Advantage program by roughly $156.3 billion over 10 years.

(more…)

It’s a common talking point by those pushing health care “reform” that those who are oppose the legislation making its way through Congress are merely shills for the health insurance industry. This contention, as Tim Carney points out in a few different places, ignores a few things. One, the health insurance industry is pushing hard to enact health care reform and essentially supports the legislation that is emerging from Congress. Two, the health insurance industry is giving campaign contributions heavily to those who are authoring the reform:

The insurance industry gave 60% of its money to Democratic candidates in 2008 and so far has given 65% of its money to Democrats in the 2010 cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org.

The top recipient of health insurance PAC money this cycle is Henry Waxman, chief author of the House “reform bill,” who is tied with Harry Reid for that honor.

In 2008, the top recipient of HMO money was Barack Obama, and the top non-presidential recipent was Max Baucus, chief Senate author of “reform.”

Maybe any liberals who are in favor of this “reform” can post a comment or two about how they feel being patsies for the health insurance lobby.

The headline in the Columbus Dispatch trumpets Governor Strickland’s talking points that more people will gain health coverage because of a variety of new regulations in the state budget. A more accurate headline would have indicated that these changes will actually raise health insurance rates in Ohio, leading to more Ohioans going without insurance.

By imposing government price caps on how much insurance can charge those who have pre-existing conditions, legislators and the governor have mandated that everyone pay more for insurance. People with pre-existing conditions are guaranteed to cost insurance companies a lot of money, almost certainly more money that these individuals pay in premiums. Insurance companies must pay for that coverage by raising the rates for everyone else.

The Dispatch story goes on to discuss how rates for health insurance premiums are increasing dramatically. The regulations being celebrated in this article are a huge part of why premiums are going up. It’s unfortunate that the reporter didn’t make this elementary connection.

As the article also points out, many of the uninsured are young adults. Let’s consider why a young adult wouldn’t want to buy insurance. For one, young adults are a pretty healthy group. They don’t go to doctors or use health care as much as older people. So they have less need for insurance than others. Two, with insurance rates going up, it costs a lot to pay for that insurance. So healthy people don’t want to pay a lot for something they have little chance of using? Makes sense to me (and it did when I was a twenty-year-old and I decided I wasn’t going to purchase health insurance. As a result, I went without for two years). The only way to tempt these people into paying for insurance is to keep its cost down. Too bad the governor and General Assembly didn’t do that.