quantity, quality, price – pick two
Here we go again.
The government of Massachusetts has decided what quality of health insurance shall be offered, and has decided what price it shall sell at.
…and the insurance companies, realizing that they can’t make a profit selling $20 bills for $18.59 each, have come back with the quantity that they’re willing to sell.
Zero.
The standoff between Massachusetts regulators and health insurance companies intensified yesterday, as most insurers stopped offering new coverage to small businesses and individuals…
People seeking to buy health insurance for the first time, or customers looking to change policies, found they could not do so, at least temporarily.
The government officials, with their extensive economic educations and real life experience running businesses responded to this with an “oops, our bad; let’s fix those regulations”.
I joke, of course.
and state officials demanded that the insurers post updated rates online and resume offering policies by Friday.
More details:
The confusion — or market chaos, as one insurance industry official called it — followed the state Division of Insurance’s rejection last week of 235 of 274 premium increases proposed by insurers.
“Market chaos”.
Because, yes, this is exactly the kind of things that happens in unregulated markets like laptop computers, lawn care services, and iced coffee sales.
The markets caused this problem.
Some more craziness for you:
Health insurers, however, said they could not calculate new rates until a judge rules on their request for an injunction to prevent the state from continuing to block increases for the coverage period that started April 1. Insurance carriers had proposed premium rate increases averaging 8 to 32 percent, which the state found excessive. The case is expected to go before a Superior Court judge in Boston as early as tomorrow.
“We’re in limbo until the issue gets resolved,” said Lora Pellegrini, president of the Massachusetts Association of Health Plans, a trade group representing most of the state’s insurance companies. “There are no approved rates in the market right now. You’re seeing the first sign of the kind of market chaos we were worried about.”
Insurance industry critics said the inability of new customers to buy insurance, even for a few days, is troubling. “This really is a violation of the fundamental principles of health care reform in Massachusetts, which is the universal availability of insurance,” said Brian Rosman, research director at Health Care for All, a Boston consumer advocacy group.
A “violation” of the “fundamental principles” of health care reform.
Wow.
So legislators passed a law (Romney-care, which, by the way, I once endorsed, and now apologize for), and the law spells out a few things…but, apparently, the law has unwritten “fundamental principles” that are visible to members of “consumer advocacy groups”, and one of these fundamental principles is that the state can mandate any level of coverage it wants, and it can mandate any level of price it wants, and insurance companies just have to slice open their veins and pour cash out until they go bankrupt if it happens that the level of service costs more than the revenue.
Veronica Turner, vice president of Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union United Healthcare Workers East, released a statement suggesting “insurers are unnecessarily shutting their doors as a negotiating ploy” in their dispute with the state.
Ah, unions.
They jack up the cost of medicine, then they lobby for the government to make it illegal to charge customers what medicine costs, then they get upset at the victims of the regulation for being unwilling to bleed more.
tjic.com
1. Kevin Says:
April 7th, 2010 at 9:27 am Quote
The SEIU thinks cutting off service isn’t a legitimate negotiating tactic?
tjic.com |
