|
|
Blog |
|
|
|
Ohio To Destroy Access to Individual Health Insurance?
By: John R. Graham
11.19.2009
I just got back from speaking in Columbus, OH, where I learned that the state’s recently passed budget includes health “insurance” reforms that make it illegal for health insurers to price actuarial risk accurately.
As of January 1, 2010, insurers in the individual market will be forced to offer open enrolment to people with any pre-existing condition, including cancer. Over time, the new law will force the insurer to charge the sickest new applicant no more than 1.5 times the premium of the healthiest beneficiary of the same age and gender.
This will attract only the sickest of the sick to apply for individual coverage – after they’ve already been diagnosed. Remarkably, the bill also has the positive reform of allowing (requiring?) employers which do not offer coverage to use IRS Section 125 to permit their employees to use pre-tax dollars to buy individual policies. It also makes COBRA continuation (for those who lose their jobs) more “generous.”
But what’s the point? If everyone can wait until they become sick to apply for individual coverage, I doubt many people will worry too much about continuing group-based coverage.
We’ve been saying that New York is an example of what the whole U.S. will look like under the looming federal health “reform.” We may have to move our focus to Ohio, where “reform” is code for a complex mess of adverse selection, with broadly predictable, if unintended and undesired, consequences.
This blog post originally appeared on State House Call.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
