BG, I used to work in insurance. Aetna is huge as a company, huge in the corporate insurance realm, but as an individual insurer, they’re a bit player in California.
If you’re perfectly healthy with no risk factors, you can get a competitive plan from them. But at a less than 5% market share, Aetna decided not to compete.
A bunch of other companies did decide to compete.
[quote]Believe it or not, it is NOT WORTH it for insurance companies to even collect a $1100, $1500 or $2100 a month premium on a LOT of “guaranteed-issue” new sign-ups.[/quote]
Since as a society, we’re not really willing to say let them die in the street. There’s a ton of reasons why companies will not insure people.
As for those guaranteed losers, well, some one is eating it already today before ACA. The person is you. Like it or not, your premium already is that much higher, the bills from the ER are 5-10X what they should be because only 1 in 5 or 1 in 10 people seeking treatment have the ability to pay.
Or, we can go Dickenesque, let them die in the street. Don’t show up anywhere without your med-card or med-chip and don’t lose conciousness, no proof of pay, no treatment. Hope you don’t die.
As for wanting treatment where-ever, whenever and speedily. You can always pull out cash. In fact, if more people did, I suspect you’d find medical care is actually a lot cheaper and suddenly, you really decide do you need that $3000 patented cancer screening.
At the root of the issue is insurance is about spreading risks. When the insurers, can drop your coverage, deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions, etc, there really isn’t a level playing field. Not among consumers, but between consumer and seller.
An easier fix probably would have been to simply exclude the ability to factor pre-existing conditions, limit insurance groupings to zip code or larger geographic regions, all in, all or nothing. Not even smoking, IMHO.
Why? Because once you say smoking, then frankly, you start the rectal exam of every choice you make. You want health insurance, sure, he’s your car monitor so we know if you speed or not.
