[…] People with pre-existing medical conditions can get guaranteed issue coverage through Cover Colorado, but are definitely not “guaranteed access to the individual market”. When a person with pre-existing conditions applies for an individual policy in Colorado (and in most other states), the insurance company can deny the application, place exclusions on the pre-existing conditions, or offer the policy at a higher initial rate based on medical history. It doesn’t matter whether the applicant has had continuous coverage or not. […]
Blog
Spiraling Prescription Drug Use In Kids
[…] The thought of 30 percent of adolescents being on medication for chronic conditions should make us all sit up and take notice. Hopefully it will fuel the cry for better school lunches and increased attention to prevention of obesity and mental health problems in kids. As a society, we simply cannot afford to continue to increase our utilization of prescription drugs.
Colorado Governor Signs Bill Requiring Maternity Coverage On All Policies
Governor Bill Ritter signed Colorado House Bill 1021 into law last week, instituting what I consider to be one of the most significant changes to health insurance law in recent years. The law will require all health insurance policies in Colorado to provide coverage for both maternity care and contraception, starting next year. Without this law, people who purchase individual health insurance have very little in the way of options for maternity coverage. […]
Healthcare Continuing To Take A Larger Chunk Of Family Budgets
[…] Premiums for health insurance in the individual market are lower than those in the group market, but there’s no employer paying a portion of the premium. And the premiums alone amount to 10% of household income. When you add in the deductibles and other out of pocket expenses, it’s not surprising at all that nearly half of everyone buying insurance in the individual market was considered high-burden in 2006 (spending more than 10% of household income on health care). […]
Disability Insurance Awareness Month
[…] May is disability insurance awareness month, and it’s a good reminder to consider how well you’re protecting your greatest asset – your earning potential. Working adults are more likely to encounter a disability that prevents them from working for at least 90 days than they are to die, and yet people tend to be more proactive about securing life insurance than disability insurance. […]
Most Emergency Room Patients Have Health Insurance
[…] Finding a doctor who takes Medicaid is significantly more difficult than finding a doctor who takes private health insurance, and I wonder if that might be a contributing factor in the crowding of our emergency rooms. If a person with Medicaid is sick and unable to find a nearby doctor who accepts Medicaid, he might end up not seeing a doctor at all and his condition might worsen to the point of needing emergency room care. Maybe efforts to make Medicaid more attractive to doctors might help to alleviate some of the over-crowding in emergency rooms.
Another Way Exercise Could Lower Health Care Costs
[…] Maybe if doctors and patients were all aware of the fact that exercise is more beneficial in the long term than anti-depressants, we could start to cut down on the number of anti-depressant prescriptions being written. Lower utilization of pharmaceutical products would be helpful in terms of limiting the overall cost of medical claims and thus the price of health insurance as time goes on. […]
Dentists Overprescribing Antibiotics and Avoiding Health Care Reform
[…] MD Whistleblower had a couple good observations:
– Dentists prescribe prophylactic antibiotics (ATBs) with routine recklessness… Many dentists irrationally prescribe ATBs before teeth cleanings and other procedures.
– Not a syllable in the ~2000 page health care reform law that affects dentists.
Demand For HSAs Continuing To Grow
[…] A new report from AHIP notes that the number of Americans covered by HDHP/HSA policies reached 10 million in 2010, up from 8 million last year. In Colorado, 9.2% of the under-65, privately insured population has HSA qualified coverage, which is the third-highest percentage in the nation. A recent study by the Mountain States Employers Council reports that 27% of Colorado employers surveyed are offering consumer-driven health plans this year, up from 21% last year. […]
Focusing On Nutrition To Prevent Cancer
[…] Colorado ranks among the top of the list in terms of how many people eat the recommended amount of produce each day, and yet the vast majority of our adults are not getting the recommended amounts (we only rank near the top because so many other states are doing so much worse). Health care reform has focused largely on expanding access to health insurance for the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured, and that’s a good start. But eliminating tobacco use and increasing access to nutritious food could go a long way in terms of improving the health of the American people.
Colorado Health Insurance Report By The DOI
Last month, the Colorado Division of Insurance released a report on health insurance in the state, and it is definitely be a good read for anyone interested in how health insurance works in Colorado. There are all sorts of interesting facts included. For example, only a third of Coloradans are covered by a health insurance policy that is regulated by the Division of Insurance. The rest are either covered by a self-insured employer plan or a government plan, or are uninsured. […]
Options For Maternity Coverage In Colorado Disappearing Fast
Getting individual health insurance with maternity benefits just got a lot harder for women in Colorado. For the last few years, there have only been three major carriers that offered maternity coverage on individual policies: Golden Rule (United HealthOne), Assurant, and Rocky Mountain Health Plans. As of the end of April 2010, both Golden Rule… Read more about Options For Maternity Coverage In Colorado Disappearing Fast
Balancing Individual And Group Health Insurance After Reform
[…] It remains to be seen how health care reform will actually impact the breakdown of individual versus group health insurance. Currently, there are far more people with group coverage than individual policies. The balance might shift a bit as health care reform takes effect, but I doubt that there will be a mass exodus away from group plans in favor of individual coverage.
Colorado Expanding Access To Medicaid And CHP+
A new state law that imposes fees on hospitals went into effect this week. Over the next few years, it’s expected to allow Colorado to expand access to health insurance to about 150,000 of the state’s 800,000 uninsured residents. The funds generated from the hospital fees will allow Colorado to expand access to Medicaid for adults, increase the income limit to qualify for Medicaid, and expand access to Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+) for children and pregnant women. […]
An Alternative To Rescission
[…] One way or another, my guess is that if all individual health insurance policies had to be thoroughly underwritten at the time of application, health insurance carriers would figure out a way to make the process as efficient as possible. And the happy result would be that if people were approved for coverage, they could rest assured that there would be no possibility of rescission in their future. It’s likely that thorough underwriting would result in more people being declined for coverage, but at least those people would then have the option of applying for coverage through a high risk pool like Cover Colorado. […]
When Less Is More
[…] The problem is that health insurance companies are paying for care with premium dollars collected from insureds, and as costs go up, so do premiums. Until we shift our attitude to a “less is more” mentality, we’re going to continue to see an increase in the cost of care, and subsequently in the cost of health insurance. But it’s not just about money. Articles like Maggie’s should give us a reason to question excessive screening and testing, simply from a standpoint of having a better quality of life. The fact that it could drive down health care costs is a bonus.
Anthem Rate Increase Likely Justified By Cost Of Claims
[…] As I noted last month, while Anthem’s rate increase for 2010 was a big one, their premiums are still very much in line with premiums currently being charged by other individual health insurance carriers in Colorado. My guess is that de Percin’s take on this is probably correct: “… it is outrageous but it’s probably not a case of gouging.”
Expanding Access To Health Insurance For People With Disabilities
[…] Will guaranteed issue health insurance – and subsidies to help pay for it – starting in 2014 also help to decrease the number of people receiving SSDI? If people had a way to obtain affordable health insurance without having to qualify as disabled, it stands to reason that there would be more incentive for people to return to work after a serious illness or injury.
Three Of The Top Insurers Extending A Hand To Young Adults
Three of the nation’s top health insurance carriers – Wellpoint, United Healthcare, and Humana – have announced that they will automatically keep young adults under the age of 26 on their parents’ policies between now and September 23, when the health care reform legislation guarantees this option for all everyone under the age of 26. […]
Compromises Necessary To Improve Access To Healthcare
[…] We definitely needed a solution to make health insurance available for everyone, and there’s no way to do that without taking away some of the freedoms from both sides (including the ability for insurance companies to decline applicants, and the ability for people to choose to not have health insurance). The legislation isn’t perfect, and it won’t please everyone, but hopefully a decade from now, the problem of millions of Americans living without health insurance will be a memory.
Guest Blogger – Effects of Health Care Reform Legislation
[…] Carol indicated that it was the consensus of everyone she has talked with that $5 billion won’t come close to covering the cost of these high-risk pools in 50 states for four years. She and a number of other Medicaid commissioners are leaning away from expansion or development of new high-risk pools in their states, not for political or philosophical reasons, but because the pools don’t make economic sense. As the federal bill is written, if states don’t act, a federal high risk pool is to be created to fill essentially the same function.
Not Enough Doctors Choosing Geriatrics
[…] There’s a pretty obvious need for a dramatic increase in the number of medical students entering the field of geriatrics, and it is a bit perplexing as to why the health care reform legislation didn’t put more emphasis on loan repayments and other financial incentives to encourage doctors to pursue a career in geriatrics. My guess is that as the shortage of geriatricians becomes more pressing over the next few years, we might see some additional funding aimed at solving the problem.
Colorado Ski Resorts And Health Care Reform
One of the aims of the health care reform legislation is to encourage employers to provide health insurance for their employees. In order to close the loophole that would allow employers to hire many part-time workers (and avoid paying benefits for them), the new law looks at the total number of hours worked to determine “full time equivalent employees”. On page 309-310 of the Senate Bill, the math is explained: […]
Eligibility For Colorado State Mandated Basic And Standard Plans
[…] All individual health insurance applications in Colorado ask a set of questions to determine if the applicant qualifies as a group of one. If the applicant does, and is declined for the individual coverage, the insurance carrier must offer group of one coverage instead (although it will be significantly more expensive than the individual policy). If the person does not meet the definition of a group of one, he or she will be sent a notice by the insurance carrier regarding eligibility for Cover Colorado.
Playing The Odds With Health Insurance
[…] The premium costs that are often tossed around represent group premiums, which are partially (sometime completely) paid by employers. Once individual health insurance becomes guaranteed issue in 2014, the premiums will likely rise to cover the cost of paying for pre-existing conditions. The only way to offset this rate hike is for more healthy people to join the insurance pool. That’s where the mandate comes in, and hopefully it will work.