posted August 02, 2012 03:15 PM            

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Health Care Reform

July 31, 2012

Under the Affordable Care Act, insurance companies must for the first time reveal how much of premium dollars they actually spend on health care and how much they spend on administration, such as salaries and marketing. Wednesday, Aug. 1, is the date when most insurers owe rebates if less than 80 percent of the premium dollars they collect go toward medical care. "One of the reasons that health care costs in the United States are so much higher than the rest of the world is that insurance companies spend too much on administration and profiteering. What we're trying to do is get health care dollars into health care," Sen. Bernie Sanders said. "This is a good step in that direction."

Nationwide, insurers must give back $1.1 billion to 12.8 million Americans this year. The average rebate is $151 per household.

In Vermont, more than 4,600 Vermonters are due an average $807 rebate on their health insurance premiums. The Vermont average rebate is greater than any other state. In all, 4,636 Vermont policy holders - all covered by CIGNA - are due more than $2.3 million in rebates under the Affordable Care Act, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Most people get health insurance through their employers, so most of the rebates are being sent to companies. They may distribute the money to workers or use the funds to keep down future premium costs.

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posted August 03, 2012 09:31 AM            

It's enlightening to know these leftists don't have any problem at all with Google's 25% profits but then, the hall mark of Socialists is hypocrisy.

It's also enlightening to know Socialists resist every single plan to increase competition between insurance companies for policy-holder's business. Competition in business always has the effect of lowering prices and profits. But the usual suspects are anti-business, anti-profits and anti-competition. They seem to have the idea people should risk their money, work their as$es off and refuse to take the fruits of their own labor...or turn all the profits over to them...or their designated Socialist, O'Bomber.

posted August 03, 2012 11:56 AM            

Second, Jwhop, what's up with "the usual suspects"? Using that phrase or label is like so many of your labels: meaningless to everyone except you.
Your thoughts on Democrats and profit aren't borne out in how they've enacted reform. If they were interested in decreasing profits, we'd have a single-payer system, and the government would have taken control of everything. That's not what happened, though, is it? No, they left the insurance structure in place, and they've handed over millions of new clients. Trying to make their profits out as small when they increased 250% over the period of 2000 - 2009. 2008 - 2010 their profits increased a staggering 51%. This is akin to Randall's one degree argument in the global warming debate. It's deceptive to minimize what actually amounts to quite a lot.

posted August 03, 2012 12:07 PM            

Yes, your insurance is through your employer but YOUR employer can only purchase YOUR insurance policy from one of 2 or 3 companies licensed by the state to do business there. That's not competition that's a virtual monopoly within each state. Get it acoustic? Not competition for policy holder's business which lowers prices but monopoly which raises prices.

posted August 03, 2012 12:13 PM            

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Yes, your insurance is through your employer but YOUR employer can only purchase YOUR insurance policy from one of 2 or 3 companies licensed by the state to do business there. That's not competition that's a virtual monopoly within each state. Get it acoustic? Not competition for policy holder's business which lowers prices but monopoly which raises prices.

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Yes, I do understand that. I spoke of that in my last post:

As far as enacting further reform to allow for wider business competition, I don't see why that couldn't be put on the table. - AG

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One day acoustic, we're all going to shed some tears with you when you finally break your streak and get something right. That won't be today however.

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