Commonwealth Care, the subsidized insurance offered by the state, is likely to get a hell of a lot more expensive this year — premiums up by 14%, co-pays way up. The ACT!! coalition is leading the action on this — get your digs in to the Governor and the Connector Board before February 28, when the Board meets.
This is important not just for those who now have Commonwealth Care. The political pressure flows backwards — from the Connector to the insurers, from the insurers to the providers — to control costs. Obviously that affects all of us.
And yes, they are all sensitive on some level to the political pressures involved to keep the health care law working. If folks can't afford the subsidized care, the whole thing starts to wobble.
Please share widely!
…they suck you in at a low “introductory rate” and when they have you on the hook for a while – boom – they jack the rates up on you.
The premiums are going up 14%. For my family, this means an extra $10 a month. But, the copays are going up by 25-100%. That’s at least an additional $40 a month for my family and will likely discourage some necessary preventive care.
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p>That is the problem. This jeopardizes the success of health reform. Having (paying for) an insurance card doesn’t count for much if it doesn’t lead to better health. We’ll pay for this on the back end when patients present with more complicated/advanced problems. We’ll all pay for it in the overall costs to the health care system. And, we as individuals will pay for it with our slim wallets and our heealth right now.
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p>Please take action, through ACT, contacting the Governor, Connector, or your legislators.
Here’s a different perspective from someone who works in healthcare, is an activist for guaranteed quality healthcare for all, and who’s been studying reform options for 20 years: The sooner this wasteful house of cards called Chapter 58 is allowed to fall the better. The notion of it wobbling is long past – it’s largely a wasteful boondoggle that’s on its way down. But let’s save face and say “Hey, we tried it as an experiment and discovered it’s not the solution, so we’re doing something else now”.
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p>Because only when the state backs away from this expensive Connector Contraption – merely a new layer of unnecessary bureaucracy – that exists to spend hundreds of millions of public dollars on advertising and PR campaigns and to purchase private insurance products, and backs away from the flawed and failing individual mandate with its unfair tax penalties for being uninsured, will we be able to undertake needed health system reforms.
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p>There are fair and cost-effective ways to do reform and then there are other approaches (see Chapter 58). As a state community we have an obligation to achieve quality coverage for all by proving the value of each dollar spent and without resorting to unfair cost-shifting to the poor and moderate income residents. The current approach is wasting huge sums of taxpayer dollars on non-healthcare expenditures. I find it incredible that the appropriately named “Act 2” coalition is still propping up this insurance company boondoggle approach to expanding coverage and that the extent of their “leading the action” is to try and reduce further cost shifting to the poor. We’re all getting shafted!! Doesn’t that matter??
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p>Are Harvard Pilgram/UnitedHealth HMO and MA BCBS giving out so much in grant money (MA BCBS alone doled out well over $20 Million since forming in 2001 after they overcharged subscribers and ended up with $1Bil in “surplus, money that they apparently didn’t want to give back), have these insurance companies given out so much money that practically no one in the state will challenge this flawed “reform”??
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p>And before you attack me for not feeling grateful that this law has gotten more people needed insurance coverage…yes, it’s good that more low income state residents are covered now than before but it’s not good (in fact it’s very very bad) that the financing of this expanded coverage is done in such a wasteful manner that the entire “reform” is not affordable nor sustainable. But system reform should reform the system – that requires simultaneous policy changes to improve access, cost and quality. It doesn’t work to create an artificial model of the 3 legged stool of reform
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p>Private health insurance companies represent a large cause of our problems in health care access, cost and quality. The industry’s fragmentation, complexity and bureaucracy exist because it helps the insurance companies compete in the commercial marketplace selling their various “products” and maximizing their profits (which they must call “surplus” if they enjoy nonprofit legal status, like MA BCBS and Harvard Pilgram do). These inherent characteristics of the insurance industry are what drives much of the other fragmentation, complexity and bureaucracy (read “waste”) in the larger healthcare system and make it harder to implement effective QA programs to discourage and monitor for overtreatment, fraud, etc.
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p>This is so tiresome. And depressing. I wish Massachusetts advocacy groups and progressives (and politicians, too) would go cold-turkey on the insurance company money and then be free to participate in more worthwhile reform efforts like those in Vermont, RI, CT and Wisconsin. Here’s a great article on that:
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p>The Wisconsin Way, in The American Prospect, by Roger Bybee, March 29, 2007 (article web only)
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p>”strategic lessons in pushing for progressive universal health care… “We have public opinion on our side, but the opposition will play on doubts, anxieties, and fears so that people would rather hang onto an imperfect status quo.”
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p>http://www.prospect.org/cs/art…
Healthcare is free? Since when?
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p>Who is going to pay for this? The obese, smokers, alcohol abusers, drug abusers, people who engage in risky behavior, ie communicable disease, multiple para/gravida by women who have a “problem”. I/we will be obligated to foot the bill for them? I think not.
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p>People who clamor for endless freebies had better get their priorities straightened out before they kill the goose. “Quality” medical care for all. Who is going to provide this fictitious medical care? The health care providers we have now are overwhelmed. Nurses are leaving nursing after only months or a few years in the field. It is a tough job, with crappy hours and generally lousy pay for the responsibility and liability. Physicians are leaving MA—most especially OB/Gyn. Why —–because of
attack dog attorneys who want to make a fast buck.
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p>People come to USA for medical care. Why? Spend a few hours in Mass General. Half the people there as patients are not Americans. AND—-they pay cash.
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p>Wake up.
It was never about reform. It is about data mining, eroding rights and subsidizing a corrupt industry.
Mandating insurance should have been struck down as unconstitutional.
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p>http://www.patientprivacyright…
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p>Hmm, did that genetic test affect your credit rating?
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p>I hope this crashes and burns big time!
Federal Employees Program (BCBSSA) 2008 premium increase for basic option – 3%; 2008 premium increase for standard option – 4%.
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p>Hewitt Associates (a global HR consulting firm)- projects a national average 2008 employer premium increase of 8.7% increase.
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p>Mercer Group (a global HR consulting firm) – projects a national average 2008 employer premium increase of 6.7%
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p>I am most familiar with the Mercer Consulting Group which has a stellar reputation for negotiating fair rates from insurers on behalf of Mercer clients (employers).
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p>So, clearly, a 14% increase in the employer premium (or Connector premium, in this case) seems out of line with national trends.
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p>I should note, that the average projected increases (and the actual data from FEP) reflect only the plan premium increase, not out-of-pocket expenses which can skew the cost. I used the data above, however, because the article below indicated that the 4% to 14% increase was for premiums only, not out-of-pocket fees.
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p>Dec 5, 2007, article from the Kaiser Foundation
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p>http://www.kaisernetwork.org/D…
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Perhaps the initial premiums, co-pays, and deductibles were all set too low to begin with, reflecting the amount of money available politically.
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p>With prices artificially set too low by the Connector, demand exceeded expectations. The resulting deficit was predictable by anyone having taken Economics 101 (AnnEM, there’s still time to enroll!)
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p>Don’t forget the supply side of the equation! With mandated prices set too low, fewer providers are willing to participate (supply < demand.) This creates shortages.
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p>Also 100% predictable: the approaching cries for cost containment.
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p>Anyone remember the “gas crisis” of 1979? This is exactly the same (thanks to Jimmy Carter.) Nixon’s & Ford’s wage & price controls? Same thing.
The Healthy Blog website posts the story of one Comm Care member. It reads in part:
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p>The premium is going up by about $11.00 per month for this member. I assume there is no increase for the zero premium members. Is that correct?
then that’s a problem. I know they didn’t provide clarification as to why the rates will be going up. But that would be a good beginning.
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p>Each year when we re-negotiate with Blue Cross and HPHC rates do tend to go upwards on some copays. That’s not uncommon, but in this case after the very first year and we’re already getting these increases is troubling. Where is it going?
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p>I understand that there are more people than estimated by our previous esteemed administration. Did that have an impact?
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p>At this point we need to push for the reasons why there are rate increases and what is the plan going forward. We’re there any reductions in costs? What are hospitals seeing, etc.? We need more than just a release of increased co-pays from the connector.