In the news Health Care Reform

Sassi told Sebelius that insurance costs also continue to rise because medical prices are increasing faster than inflation, and people are using more health care. That use increase is driven by an aging population, new treatments and "more intensive diagnostic testing," he wrote.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100211/ap_on_he_me/us_insurance_rates_wellpoint

More reasons to scrutinize the diagnostic tests and new treatments. The insurance companies say that's driving up rates. They also say:

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.


So let me get this straight, people drop insurance because insurance is too expensive and insurance companies raise the rates on everyone left to make up for it?

No insurance companies, you go bankrupt. The remaining people aren't made of money and many just needed one more push to drop your plan and 39% will probably do it.

They aren't so stupid that they'd price gouge during a recession?

And all DC can talk about it how they'll force the insurance companies to take people with preexisting conditions and make them compete with each other with the plans they offer.



WellPoint is the largest publicly traded health insurer based on membership and is a dominant player in the individual insurance market in California. Based in Indianapolis, the company runs Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans in 14 states and Unicare plans in several others.

So we're going to break up this giant and have a bunch of smaller corporations compete for people to insure? Will those costs be cheaper? Oh right the plan is to inject 30,000,000 customers by mandating insurance coverage.

And as time has gone by, we have recruited every health person we can to screen and test and diagnose with new chronic conditions treatable only by a newer medication sold by the company that helped characterize the "disease" in the first place.

Who writes this stuff?