To Be Announced...

Everyone - including me - complains about the cost of health insurance coverage. The increases we see every year are often high enough to lead many otherwise right-thinking people to consider single payer and/or universal health care plans offered by various candidates.

Most people don't consider many of the reasons for the increases - especially those attributed to themselves.

-Overuse. People go to the doctor for everything these days. Partly because we've been trained to...partly because we're just a bunch of babies. Your car insurance goes up every time you have an accident or moving violation...is it any wonder your health insurance goes up when you go to the doctor for anti-biotics when you have a cold?
-Protective medicine. Doctors are forced to practice defensive medicine in order to protect themselves from unseemly lawsuits. A 2-thousand dollar MRI charged to your insurance company is no big deal.
-We don't pay the bill. We don't read the bill, either. We only pay a small percentage (and often complain about the "size" of copays) of the bill. It's always been a mystery to me why people would try and get a larger deductible on their car insurance in order to lower their rates...but complain about having to pay $500 dollars when they get their appendix taken out.

Here's another reason costs increase. Quietly, our lawmakers force the insurers we have to cover more and more things that indirectly force you to pay more.

Bill would force insurance coverage of drug, alcohol abuse

A bill making its way through the statehouse would force insurance companies to cover a broader array of mental health services, including treatment for drug and alcohol addiction. Under current state law, if a company has more than 50 workers on its payroll and offers health care benefits the policies must cover treatment for "biologically-based" mental illnesses.

(It) would require additional coverage for substance abuse treatment, eating disorders and depression. Supporters like Senator Keith Kreiman, a Democrat from Bloomfield, say it could help keep people out of prison because studies show most inmates are either addicts or have some mental health problem. "The financial costs, the moral costs of not doing this bill are so great," Kreiman says.

There's minimal mention of the costs it will have on your premiums in the story. Certainly, those same Democrats know this and will campaign on it in future years...using it as a battering ram against the insurance industry, doctors, and the rising cost of health care. I can't believe they wouldn't consider that the added costs in coverages wouldn't be passed on to consumers. Democrats are dumb...but they're not that dumb. If I were to believe in conspiracies...this would be one of them.

Even Republicans' knees buckled under the populist pressure of such a proposal...

But Some Republicans like Senator Dave Mulder of Sioux Center complain the move will raise insurance rates, making it difficult for businesses to continue to provide health care benefits to employees...Despite that, Mulder voted for the bill in committee.

I'll never forget the time I applied for insurance coverage following my first round of cancer in my youth. I had a pre-existing condition, so I could not find an insurer who would cover me. All I wanted was to be covered for medical possibilities outside of cancer - if I broke my leg, for instance. After researching the issue - why a private insurer couldn't write a policy that could exclude coverage for cancer - I found it was lawmakers who make the rules.

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Labels: health care