Posted on 03/07/2019 5:45:23 AM PST by DoodleDawg
Remember when President Trump campaigned on a health care platform of eliminating "the lines around the states?" Well, that particular white whale has re-emerged.
Driving the news: The Trump administration posted a 15-page document Wednesday asking for public comment on a range of questions related to the interstate sale of health insurance — including questions about using part of the Affordable Care Act to make that change.
How it works: Critics see this as a backdoor way to deregulate insurance. If a patient in New York can buy a lightly regulated policy from Iowa, what good are New York's rules about what plans have to cover and how they have to cover it?
There are logistical hurdles: It's pretty hard to set up a network of doctors and hospitals that will work for patients in both Iowa and New York.
Between the lines: The administration already took a bit of a victory lap on this front when it expanded access to association health plans.
That wasn't a full-scale deregulation, but it did expand of a type of insurance that can cross state lines — even though, due to the difficulty of creating provider networks, those plans are generally confined to one metro area.
Axious is not a reliable source
My health and dental and vision insurance is a national company. Fedvip is a nationalized umbrella why wouldn’t that work? I don’t understand. I think it’s a lobbying issue and K Street is dominating Congressional thought on national insurance coverage rather than state by state with defined borders for regions of insurance providers.
I’ve seen estimates that allowing interstate insurance sales might result in a 5% reduction in premiums, at most.
NeverTrumper’s gonna hate...
Why can’t it work? If a state requires you to have certain coverages then those states need to get together and decide why those coverages are needed and allow citizens to decide if they want to pay for them.
So are Prudential, New York Life, State Farm, Progressive, Aetna, etc.
They are still regulated at the state level, so every insurance policy they sell must meet the regulatory requirements of the individual state where it is sold. I believe most of these companies maintain separate subsidiaries in each state where they operate.
I have heard doctors on Sean Hannity show describing very low prices for their network. Competition works to lower prices.
It's been tried and it's already failed.
Competition and Federalism: The Right Remedy for Excessive Health Insurance Regulation
See my link at reply #10. :-)
The McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945 stipulated that the insurance industry could not be regulated at the Federal level. This is because Congress determined that an insurance policy is a contract, not a commercial purchase ... and contract law comes under the jurisdiction of state courts.
Gee, I thought liberals were all about choice. It doesn’t seem like Axios is...
The market is essentially owned by just two entities, Aetna and United Health Care. But big or small, they tell the doctors what to do and to whom and they play God as far as the patient goes.
State chartered is some protection, and the two big ones need to be trustbusted to allow for more small companies and non profits to compete.
Because of this: "It's pretty hard to set up a network of doctors and hospitals that will work for patients in both Iowa and New York."
Insurance companies save costs by establishing a network of doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies that they negotiate with on how much they have to pay for services rendered. An insurance company in Iowa won't have a network established in New York, and they won't want to go to the expense of establishing a network for the occasional New York customer. So every bill they get from New York will be for the full cost of the service. Every visit you make you will pay the far higher out-of-network deductibles and co-pays. Considering the risks to them and the fact that they could never make money off of you I'd expect that they would just decline your business.
I find it hard to believe that anyone here on FR would think Federal oversight of any industry is actually going to result in LESS regulation than we already have, not more. LOL.
Regulation has nothing to do with it. It's costs.
The Left craves the power and control of local and state jurisdictions until it doesn’t.
Competition is always good for the consumer.
What is inaccurate about this particular story?
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