Great Moments in Socialized Medicine
The Boston Globe reports on the unintended consequences of requiring insurance companies to sell policies to people with pre-existing conditions:
Thousands of consumers are gaming Massachusetts' 2006 health insurance law by buying insurance when they need to cover pricey medical care, such as fertility treatments and knee surgery, and then swiftly dropping coverage, a practice that insurance executives say is driving up costs for other people and small businesses.
In 2009 alone, 936 people signed up for coverage with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts for three months or less and ran up claims of more than $1,000 per month while in the plan. Their medical spending while insured was more than four times the average for consumers who buy coverage on their own and retain it in a normal fashion, according to data the state's largest private insurer provided the Globe.
The typical monthly premium for these short-term members was $400, but their average claims exceeded $2,200 per month. The previous year, the company's data show it had even more high-spending, short-term members. Over those two years, the figures suggest the price tag ran into the millions.
Other insurers could not produce such detailed information for short-term customers but said they have witnessed a similar pattern. And, they said, the phenomenon is likely to be repeated on a grander scale when the new national health care law begins requiring most people to have insurance in 2014, unless federal regulators craft regulations to avoid the pitfall.
And federal regulators are great at avoiding pitfalls! Ironically, the Massachusetts medical misadventure may be a problem for Republicans in the 2012 election. Former governor Mitt Romney, in many ways an attractive candidate for the GOP presidential nomination, led the Bay State "reform" effort and to this day refuses to admit he made a mistake.
In Romney's defense, he did a lot less damage as governor of a single state than Barack Obama did as president of 50. But try putting that on a bumper sticker.
online.wsj.com |
