This Kind of Greed Makes Me Sick to My Stomach
Total health costs per year, 148.00. Total cost of insurance per year, 4800.00. Gee, which would you choose?
Now it dawned on me that with 25% of the working stiffs in this country unemployed and exiting employer health plans, that the healthy people would do exactly what I did. Four hundred bucks a month is insane. Healthy people simply can't afford to pay the McDonalds and Marlboro premiums. Only the unhealthy would stay insured. Costs would rise dramatically.
This is happening. Wellpoint Systems announced a 39% increase in premium costs. THIRTY NINE PERCENT!!!
Here's a piece I clipped from the article:
Brian Sassi, the head of WellPoint's consumer business unit, said in his letter to Sebelius that the weak economy is leading individual insurance buyers who don't have access to group plans to drop coverage or buy cheaper plans. That reduces the premium revenue available to cover claims from sicker customers who are keeping their coverage.
The result was a 2009 loss for the Anthem Blue Cross unit that sells individual policies to people who don't get insurance through their employers, he said. Higher rates for this group, which accounts for about 10 percent of Anthem's eight million customers in California, are needed to cover the shortfall expected from the continuation of that trend, according to the letter.
"When the healthy leave and the sick stay, that is going to dramatically drive up costs," Sassi said in an interview. He declined to specify the size of the unit's loss.
Now just in case you are curious, Wellpoint only made 2.7 billion in the last 3 months of fiscal 2009. That 4800 a year that I would have paid? Oh yea, Wellpoint runs Blue Cross of Idaho. Glad I could stiff Wellpoint! Makes you want to fire up a lynch mob. Really. Here's the link to the whole story with Obamacare spin...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100211/ap_on_he_me/us_insurance_rates_wellpoint
Comments