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SPEAKOUT: Break for the insured

By Darla Stuart

Published April 22, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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With today's economy, it doesn't seem as if the everyday citizen can catch a break - rising gas and food prices make a trip to the grocery store for a dozen eggs and a gallon of milk an adventure in budgeting.

However, with the introduction of House Bill 1389, the Fair Accountable Insurance Rates bill (co-sponsored by Rep. Morgan Carroll, D-Aurora, and Sen. Paula Sandoval, D-Denver), it seems as if finally something FAIR is happening for Colorado's insured.

Colorado's citizens and businesses saw their health insurance rates increase 98 percent from 2000 to 2007. The consequences of these increases were reduced or lost business-sponsored insurance benefits, an increase in the number of Colorado citizens who became uninsured, and a larger portion of accessible income consumed for health-care costs while services decreased.

Colorado's citizens and businesses deserve to know the real cost of the health-care insurance products they are buying. Health-care transparency, such as that being proposed in the FAIR bill, would provide Colorado's insured and businesses with the information necessary to choose health-care providers and plans based on quality and value.

Providing reliable cost and quality information empowers Coloradans to make informed choices. Informed choice provides a strong incentive for insurance and health-care providers to offer better care in a more affordable manner.

This is especially true for families who have members who are disabled or in need of extraordinary health-care support. These consumers need to know in great detail who provides the best product in the most economical way.

The FAIR bill requires carriers to get prior approval for proposed rate increases before they pass those rate increases on to consumers and small business. The bill also makes a higher benefit ratio a favorable factor in the Division of Insurance's review of filed premium increases. This means that carriers will be encouraged to spend more of the consumers' premium dollars on covering health-care costs for consumers. The FAIR bill makes carriers accountable to Coloradans and makes premium regulation transparent.

HB 1389 will not solve all of Colorado's health-care problems, but it is an important first step in offering Coloradans a fair shake when it comes to transparency of insurance companies' premium increases and expenditures related to consumer care.

Darla Stuart is the executive director The Arc of Aurora.

Comments

  • April 22, 2008

    6:30 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    JanetW writes:

    You have GOT to be kidding me!

    The way to "fair" insurance rates is to let the government have control? So they can drive competition out of the market, impose price controls, limit choice and provide the same sort of quality customer service that we see at the DMV?

    Morgan Carroll wants to take control of our choices on insurance and hand them over to her appointed bureaucracy.

    So much for being able to shop around for the best rates or the coverage that fits our needs - it will be one-size-fits-all insurance, determined by the bureaucrats.

  • April 22, 2008

    7:03 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Mike_In_Hartsel writes:

    Your first complaint, raising prices, is directly linked to E85 and the federal tax breaks attached to it and the use of CORN to make it. That's the reason prices are going up, not insurance rates.

    Health care rates need not be controlled by the government. Tackle tort laws first. Then watch rates drop.

  • April 22, 2008

    7:58 a.m.

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    alcambell_9 writes:

    I'm glad to see that people are starting to become aware that special interests are getting bills passed to advance their mercantile agendas that do no public good and only serve to further fill the coffers of those companies who falsely claim it is for the public health or the kids health or some other lie.

    One day, perhaps, they will wake up to the fact that the smoking ban was just that sort of special interest driven law that further fills the coffers of Pharmaceutical companies who make non smoke nicotine delivery devices. And their good friends like the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation who own billions of dollar of pharmaceutical stock, have granted over $400,000,000 to advocates of tobacco control to promote smoking bans that increase the value of their investments and reduces tax revenue to the State.

    Health was never the reason, because ventilation solves that induced fear clamined problem. It's greed and control that is behind all bans. And all bans historically do is destroy businesses and create black markets and an increase in criminal activity. Witness prohibition, for example.

  • April 22, 2008

    8:18 a.m.

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    coloradanforfairness writes:

    JanetW, this is at least the third time I've seen you here spewing insurance industry propaganda. Do you care to tell your fellow Rocky readers what insurance company / companies you're paid to shill for? Do you think it isn't obvious that that's what's going on?

    You talk about competition, but insurance industry consolidation has already choked off competition and limited consumer choice. You talk about bureaucracies but the insurance industry has got to be one of the most bloated, inefficient industries out there - what it is, 30%, maybe 40% of every dollar goes to administrative overhead? No wonder you spend so much time stiffing policyholders to avoid paying claims.

    The bill does nothing to keep people from "shopping around" as you say. It just gives the everyday citizen who's trying to get by a little protection from the predatory practices of your corrupt industry. And it's high time.

  • April 22, 2008

    10:03 a.m.

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    JanetW writes:

    You can always tell the weakness of one's argument when they start attacking the motivations of their opponents. (Ahem, your weakness is showing).

    Look, I'm not really sure how to spell this out any clearer for you: This is being pushed as part of a package that includes a return of no-fault (which is my primary beef, frankly - you can see my post on the other board). But Morgan Carroll's meddling with my consumer choices is Morgan Carroll's meddling with my consumer choices, and I personally would just as soon be able to choose my own insurance provider, find a rate that's right for me, not have to pay a 50% premium, and not have to answer to a bureaucracy.

    No, I'm not being paid by insurance companies, and it's pretty sad when a woman writes to complain about a government takeover of private choice and that's somehow "spewing insurance industry propaganda."

    Perhaps you could try explaining to people why you want the government to control what type of insurance they can buy instead of simply attacking your opponents.

    Pathetic.

  • April 22, 2008

    10:34 a.m.

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    EricRed writes:

    I still have yet to see anyone even begin to try to explain how government price controls are going to help consumers.

    With the government telling companies how much they can charge and what services they have to provide, pretty soon all of the current companies will pick up and leave Colorado.

    We'll be left with no choices, only a bloated bureaucracy slowly taking over our lives.

  • April 22, 2008

    11:58 a.m.

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    nimbusco writes:

    The main problem with the FAIR bill is that it's a band-aid solution that might or might not help consumers.

    All those people who think that our health care is NOT currently controlled by bureaucracy have apparently never dealt with an actual insurance company. The real solution, I believe, is some form of single payer system like most (all?) of the other industrialized democracies have. They seem to do it better and more efficiently than we do here in the USA.

  • April 22, 2008

    2 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Confused writes:

    The biggest reasons cost are so high (in addition to the insurance scam, the only legal racketeering scheme in the US):

    1) Government bureaucracy. National government should exist for two primary reasons: national defense (emphasis on defense) and settling disputes between state governments. It has no business telling states or individuals what to do, and that includes healthcare.

    2) If you don’t engage in really risky behavior (don’t smoke, don’t eat for 3 people, don’t drink heavily, aren’t a stuntman, etc.), your premiums are paying for people who do. Granted, you can take all the precautions and still get really sick—-that’s the whole argument behind the insurance scam. But why should low-risk patients have to subsidize the irresponsibility of those who willfully engage in high-risk behaviors?

    3) People who seek care and then don’t even make an effort to pay the bill. You don't have to pay the whole bill at once--hospitals are required to accept payments. But flatly ignoring your obligation to pay is irresponsible and unethical. Not that hospitals would happily reduce their charges if everyone paid their bills, but part of the reason costs are so high in the first place is to pick up the slack for the folks who don’t pay anything. It’s like grocery stores who buffer their theft losses by raising prices a few cents, and really, shoplifting and accepting healthcare or any other service without bothering to make payment arrangements are both theft--from me, and everyone else who DOES pay their bills.

    Nobody has the right to “free” healthcare, because it isn’t free. But neither should good healthcare be a luxury because after all, poor healthcare is costly for all of us, too. Does something need to be done about costs running rampant? Absolutely. But government involvement isn’t it, nor are the socialistic policies that have succeeded only in ensnaring people in the vicious cycle that is government assistance and shifting the cost for that to those of us who are working hard just to keep our own families fed and warm without a government check.

    Once we get Congress and its bureaucrats out of our doctors’ offices, and become more diligent about getting people to be responsible about their debts and making people who are at greatest risk for costing the most money to fund their own risky behavior, we might see a little relief. Without addressing those issues at a minimum, any other “solution” is just a band-aid over an abdominal gash.

  • April 22, 2008

    10:15 p.m.

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    Sweetpickle writes:

    The insurance companies would just have to hire more lobbyists.

  • April 23, 2008

    11:09 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    LFC writes:

    Nimbusco-

    Please, can you tell me what country is doing a good job with their health care

  • April 24, 2008

    10:18 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    BrianSchwartz writes:

    Darla Stuart (Speakout April 22) writes that since "Colorado's citizens and businesses deserve to know the real cost of the health-care insurance," House Bill 1389 should force insurance companies to provide "transparency." But we really deserve to know how politicians have inflated insurance costs in the first place.

    Tax policy encourages employer-based insurance, which essentially chains us to one insurer. Shielded from competition, insurers need not compete on price very much.

    State-level bureaucrats succumb to special interests by burdening small-group policies with many benefits we do not need. The Congressional Budget Office reports that such mandated benefits increase premiums by at least six percent, and possibly more than ten. It also reports that community rating laws increase premiums by nine percent.

    What's becoming increasingly transparent is where allegedly well-intentioned controls like House Bill 1389 will lead: politician-controlled health care and insurance where bureaucrats make decisions that rightfully belong to you and your physician.

    For more criticisms of HB1389, see PatientPowerNow.org