Health Care Canary

Investors.com ^ | February 2010 | INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY Staff

[Kaslin]

Insurance: Spiking premiums are telling us something important — about why costs are out of control and why ObamaCare won't work. It's time to listen to these price signals, not try to squelch them.

True to form, Democrats were quick to jump on the recent flap in California over the request by Wellpoint Inc.'s Anthem-Blue Cross unit for a 39% increase in premiums for its individual health plans. Forget about the complexities of health economics. This was meant to be a populist morality play.

The administration and its allies jumped on the story with a blast at insurance company greed and a proposal to slap price controls on premiums. It's a new twist on an old theme — that ObamaCare is needed to shield us from insurers' greed.

Will the American people buy this? Not if they stop to give this issue a second look. It doesn't take much digging to figure out that the premium spikes are driven not by a quest for unreasonable profit, but by an inexorable rise in underlying medical costs. Nonprofit plans, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, have been caught in the same spiral as publicly traded insurers such as Wellpoint, Cigna and Humana.

The impact of this cost push has been amplified by the loss of young, healthy customers who reckon the money they save in dropping costly plans is worth the risk of going uncovered.

[Semperfiwife]

In all reality, insurance of any kind is like paying a “protection” racket from the Mafia. Only the Mafia is played by Blue Cross, Aetna, et al. The problem we face is mostly laid at our own feet and no one is willing to say that. WE THE PEOPLE have to become more responsible for our own lives and not expect Big Pharma to keep coming up with pills that ease our pain both physical and psychological. We expect mere human beings who attend medical school to perform daily miracles and then sue them when the outcome is not what we desire. We take absolutely no risk whatsoever for this situation. We turn a blind eye and pay the “protection” money. And scream when the protection racket wants more to keep afloat.