Health insurers press for high-deductible, low-benefit policies
As we head into the final stretch before next week’s midterm elections, Americans continue to have wide-ranging views of Obamacare, but even many who have an unfavorable view of it say they would rather see Congress improve it than get rid of it.
In fact, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s most recent tracking poll of public opinion about the law, released last Tuesday, almost two-thirds of the public would rather see their member of Congress work to make the law better than to repeal and replace it.
The big, unanswered question, though, is what to fix and how to do it.
One often-cited criticism of the law is that it requires most of us to buy health insurance. The so-called “individual mandate” is especially despised by today’s Republicans, even though that party’s policy wonks thought it up back in the 1990s.
Abolishing it, however, would be tantamount to repealing the Affordable Care Act. That’s because the individual mandate is the act’s central pillar. While almost everybody likes the part of the law that makes it unlawful for insurance companies to refuse to sell coverage to anyone who wants to buy it, that provision doesn’t work without the individual mandate, as several states found out in previous years.
Take New York as an example. When that state’s lawmakers passed legislation several years ago to require insurance companies to offer policies to every legal resident of the state, the cost of coverage went through the roof because there was no accompanying individual mandate. Many insurers fled the state because they were afraid that far more unhealthy folks than healthy ones would become their customers after the law took effect, creating what is referred to in the industry as “adverse selection.” The only way an insurance company can stay afloat in such a situation is to raise rates substantially for all its customers.
Lobbyists for the insurance industry made it clear to members of Congress that they would do whatever it took to defeat the reform bill if the “guaranteed issue” provision wasn’t coupled with an individual mandate.
Seeking to avoid all-out war with the insurers, members of Congress went along with their quite reasonable demand.
There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.
This story is part of Wendell Potter. Former CIGNA executive-turned-whistleblower Wendell Potter writes about the health care industry and the ongoing battle for health reform. Click here to read more stories in this blog.
Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
