Here's a snip with comments from the article...
Posted on 07/04/2012 11:20:03 AM PDT by hiram569
The regulation in question is called Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) and it appears to have been written as to punish individual and small business Health Savings Account policyholders. It is complicated but the impact of the proposed rule is crystal clear, it discriminates against certain HSA policyholders by making them ineligible for the ObamaCare exchanges that are frantically being put into place.
Health Savings Accounts are the true alternative to government-run health care allowing individuals to opt out of the government-run system being promulgated by the bureaucrats in Washington, DC. HSAs allow users to set aside money tax-free into a savings account and that money is applied to the deductible of the health insurance plan. If you don't reach your deductible, the money is rolled over and grows in value. Health Savings Accounts have exploded in popularity as they empower consumers to make their own healthcare choices rather than waiting for a bureaucrat to approve their treatment choices. That flexibility does not fit into the government-knows best ObamaCare matrix.
That's why it is no surprise that HHS appears to be targeting a large portion of the Health Savings Account market. If the proposed rule becomes law, individual and small business HSAs will not be allowed to participate in the ObamaCare healthcare exchanges. Millions of Americans may be forced to look for different plans or even be forced to join government-run health care pools if this rule is not reversed.
(Excerpt) Read more at apapromotions.com ...
Its simply a case of thieving socialists smelling somebody else’s money,and planning to steal it.
[ If the proposed rule becomes law. ]
If it becomes law? It already is.
“... thieving socialists smelling somebody else’s money,and planning to steal it.”
Exactly. Now I suspect there is even greater reason for socialists to steal that money: they want total control over who does and doesn’t get healthcare.
Socialists definitely want to kill off the older generations who know about true liberty.
Right now our choice is between the Devil and the deep blue sea, because both candidates, Romney and Obama, believe in socialist medecine.
He LIED about Obamacare not being a tax and he LIED when he said ‘people can keep their health care plans’. LIES, LIES, LIES.. But at least he didn’t say ‘read my lips, no new taxes’. The media won’t ever let us forget THAT one.
who wrote this POS law? Obambi showed up with it in-hand 100% complete
3000 pages of it
It is being opposed with great force and clarity by the GOP through their series of well-placed advertisements. /sarc
And again, a cabinet given the power to enact regulations with the force of law by “law makers” unwilling to do the job they were elected to do and swore an oath to do. But they prefer to pass a bill they didn’t read and let bureauocrats make regulations, thus insulating themselves from the hard work and the responsibility for their actions.
Here's a snip with comments from the article...
My brother works for Blue Cross/Blue Shield
1.)HSA's are not being eliminated..only the very high deductible ones such as $10,12 and 15K deductibles. BC/BS is actually going to pushing HSA plans greater in the years to come. Also the people with the older high deductible plans are being grandfathered.
2.) The Medical Loss Ratio is actually a great thing for individuals and consumers. Has NOTHING to do with HSA's.
What the MLR say's is the insurance co's must spend at least 85% of every premium dollar on claims. Up to recent they could spend 25 cents on every premium dollar on claims and spend the rest of salaries and staff and lavious trips.
As a matter of fact, BC/BS is sending back in the next several weeks hundreds of millions of dollars in rebate checks to their policy holders because they spent less than 85 cents on claims for 2011.
.There are some thing that are good in obamacare such as the MLR and the Republicans need to push those good aspects in a totally new bill.
I could be wrong, but I get the feeling it had been sitting in some congressional back room or safe, gathering dust, for years, waiting for an opportune time to spring it on us. It's HillaryCare, 20 years later, soundly rejected back then, and now it's upon us.
I got the same feeling about Homeland Security. A multi-thousand page monstrosity that came together mighty fast to have been thought through, and needed to be shoved down our throats before anyone had a chance to read it, and we'll worry about the details later.
"Never let a crisis go to waste."
see my post #10.
Saving for your own healthcare is not a trait that you’ll find in liberals, so Obama doesn’t have to worry about ticking off his loyal supporters with this one. The same thinking will soon apply to our retirement savings accounts.
I guess my family is SOL.
The man showed week one he wasn’t going to be MY president.
You're right - and it's going to get worse.
2) Here we go again. If our government allowed real competition, such as crossing state lines with medical insurance (and for that matter, why not world wide? We go global with every other form of business completion, why not medical insurance?), it would do a lot to keep costs down. 85% for claims leaves only 15% to satisfy shareholders and account for all overhead.
15% is a good bottom line for the best of non-profit charities, the good ones. It isn't enough for a private business.
I recently read that, for instance, gross profits for Apple Computers was 40%, and you don't hear anyone whining and complaining about that. That's way beyond what Evil Oil Companies make on average.
In some ways, a dictatorship called Singapore has better ideas about medical coverage than we do. What does that say about us, aside from too many corrupt idiots in charge?
Work-arounds are already coming into place on the Medical Loss Ratio. Part of the “must spend so much on premiums and patients” can also be spent on “quality initiatives and process improvement”. So now Six Sigma Black Belts are hired as consultants to train managers, doctors, administrators and nurses as Six Sigma yellow belts and Green Belts. Then status meetings and process reviews and paperworks and tours become part of “monitoring the process” and looking for potential improvements, billable toward MLR instead of overhead.
Indeed; I think Romney's 'promise' to repeal/roll-back obamacare is much the same.
Why do you think government setting a maximum [gross] profit margin is a great thing?
In the long run, the 85% MLR requirement is not a good thing for consumers. This requirement will make private insurance companies more unstable as the HHS piles on coverage mandates that narrow profit margins for insurance companies. If an insurance company (a smaller one for example) has a bad year, they cannot count on reserves from the previous year and out of business they will go. Result, fewer insurance companies, fewer start ups and less competition.
The idea of the 0-care law is to make the sale of private insurance untenable, thus making single payor inevitable. Aren’t monopolies just great.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.