The Republican-sponsored “Repealing the Job Killing Health Care Law Act” will be voted on in the House next week. As explained in the last post, “Will Health Care Reform Be Repealed?,” this bill is intended to nullify the Affordable Care Act health care reform that became law last spring.
Many Americans, including those suffering from mesothelioma, are fed up with being denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, or learning that they’ve exceeding coverage limits. Lifetime coverage limits already have been eliminated by the health care reform law, and beginning in 2014 insurers will no longer be able to deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
In last year’s elections, many Republicans campaigned on repealing health care reform. But now that they are in control of the House, they are hearing from lobbyists that the health insurance industry does not want the Act repealed.
Last year, health insurers tried to derail passage of health care reform bill. But now that it’s become law, and the bean counters and number crunchers have analyzed its effects, they’ve come to realize something startling — the Act will be good for business. This is mostly because, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the Act will allow 32 million Americans to receive health insurance who wouldn’t have it otherwise. And nearly all of those new policies will be written by private insurance companies.
This is not to say they love everything about health care reform. They have a lot of new regulations to deal with, such as the provision that large group plans must spend at least 85% of premium income on benefits, instead of on marketing, paperwork, or profits.
However, now that it’s dawned on the insurance executives that they’re going to get millions of new customers, they aren’t so worried about the regulations. Reporting for The Politico, Sarah Kliff finds insurance companies eagerly preparing for expansion and exploring all the ways they can capitalize in the new health insurance landscape. Sounds like the law might grow some jobs, not kill jobs.
In fact, the one thing that most worries the insurance CEOs is that Congress will leave most of the health care reform bill intact but remove the individual mandate. Without the individual mandate, the health reform law really would be a disaster for insurance companies.
The mandate that everyone must acquire health insurance goes into effect in 2014, and it’s probably the most controversial part of the bill if you exclude the non-existent “death panels.” Many politicians have called the mandate unconstitutional and have sworn to repeal it if they can’t repeal the entire law.
Joseph M. Zubretsky, CEO of Aetna, explained that without the mandate, insurers won’t be able to offer affordable insurance. “The unintended consequence of repealing and replacing part of the legislation is the biggest risk here,” he said. “If guaranteed issue stays but the enforceable mandate disappears, you need another mechanism to make the costs in the risk pool work.”
“Guaranteed issue” is the provision that insurers can no longer refuse to insure someone because of pre-existing conditions. This part of the law also will go into effect in 2014 for everyone. Very simply, without the mandate, young and healthy people will put off buying insurance until they have major medical expenses. And then the insurers’ business model flies out the window.
Zubretsky of Aetna says his company has been talking to Republicans on this issue, and he said he believes they understand the “consequences” of repealing the health care reform bill, in whole or in part.
Those Republican lawmakers probably will put on a good show of trying to repeal health care reform for the folks back home. But with the insurance industry telling them to back off, they won’t try very hard.
This entry was posted on Friday, January 14th, 2011 at 1:38 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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