Predictably, Democrats are mad as wet hens.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/20/AR2010092006665.html
Some of the country's most prominent health insurance companies have decided to stop offering new child-only plans, rather than comply with rules in the new health-care law that will require such plans to start accepting children with preexisting medical conditions after Sept. 23.
"We're just days away from a new era when insurance companies must stop denying coverage to kids just because they are sick, and now some of the biggest changed their minds," Ethan Rome, executive director of Health Care for America Now, an advocacy group, said in a statement. "[It] is immoral, and to blame their appalling behavior on the new law is patently dishonest."
So that's the line... attack the insurance companies some more, try to beat them into submission. But are the insurance companies claims accurate? Can this be "blamed" on ObamaCare? To find out, let's read their logic.
Three insurers - WellPoint, Cigna and CoventryOne - all cited uncertainty in the health insurance market for their decisions. That incertitude and the resulting decision of other insurers to drop their child-only plans, according to WellPoint spokeswoman Kristin Binns, "has created an unlevel competitive environment."
CoventryOne spokesman Matthew D. Eyles said that the insurer was facing "unique challenges that could undermine our ability to offer value and meet our continued obligations to existing policyholders."
Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for AHIP, noted that insurers will be accepting children with preexisting conditions in other types of plans.
But, he said, extending such coverage in child-only policies "provides a very powerful incentive for a parent to wait until their child becomes very sick before purchasing coverage."
Zirkelbach added that in 2014, when similar protections kick in for all individuals with preexisting conditions, virtually all Americans will be required to get health insurance.
With no such mandate currently in place, however, the result over the next several years could be that the pool of children insured by child-only plans would rapidly skew toward those with expensive medical bills, either bankrupting the plans or forcing insurers to make up their losses by substantially increasing premiums for all customers. And Zirkelbach said the effect could be compounded if only a few plans remain in the market.
In other words, this decision was driven by finances. They saw the policies would likely only be purchased in the future for high-cost sick kids, which would either bankrupt them or require higher premiums across the board. So they opted, instead, to not offer these policies at all.
To tell the truth, it sounds like a perfectly reasonable decision.
And their claim that ObamaCare is to blame? That seems reasonable and accurate, as well.
Reason Magazine puts it quite well, as they consider the contradictions embraced by the Pro-ObamaCare folks:
http://reason.com/blog/2010/09/21/we-probably-didnt-need-those-c
But it’s indicative of one of the new health care law’s fundamental contradictions: Insurers are expected to both abide by new rules, which could prove costly, and not significantly change their prices or services in response to them. And it suggests how easy it is for well-meaning policies to backfire. A provision intended to ensure that children have unimpeded access to health insurance coverage has ended up resulting in fewer options for covering children’s health.
Democrats are screaming mad because of the economic realities created by the ObamaCare law. You know what? You wrote and passed the dang bill... so live with it!
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