Healthy Indiana Plan Nearing Capacity for Childless Adults

One year after the state launched a state-subsidized health care program for the uninsured, many people are in danger of losing access to Indiana health insurance due to an enrollment cap. 

Shari Rudaskvy from the Indianapolis Star says that the Healthy Indiana plan is close to reaching the cap of 34,000 on adults without children that are allowed to enroll. Currently, about half all 42,000 enrollees fall in that category.

Higher unemployment rates will probably lead to even more people applying for the plan, causing it to reach capacity even sooner. Those adults who have access to health insurance from their job (even if it's prohibitively expensive) or who need access to vision or dental care (HIP doesn't cover either) might find that it makes more sense to get health insurance quotes for another plan that could help them. The same goes for people who are underinsured.

UnitedHealth to Guarantee Your Right to Health Insurance

This is pretty strange: Golden Rule, a part of UnitedHealth, is now selling an insurance plan that ensures your future access to health insurance. The Continuity plan guarantees the right to health insurance in case you get laid off or your employer no longer sponsors health insurance coverage. The monthly fee is a percentage of the current health insurance premium. I guess this could be a good idea for someone with pre-existing conditions that might prevent them from buying health insurance on the open market, but is this really that much of a savings on individual health insurance rates over COBRA?

UnitedHealth's Continuity is now available in 25 states, and plans are that it will soon expand to 40.

How to Handle Life Insurance During the Bailouts

Many consumers are worrying about their life insurance policies in the wake of the AIG bailout. Insurance Bureau has some tips:

Q: What do I do with my term life insurance?
A: If you need more term life insurance, buy the additional insurance with a more stable provider as a backup.

Q: What if the value of the cash portion of my universal life insurance or whole life insurance policy has lost value?
A: In that case, financial experts recommend that you either remain with your current life insurance carrier, or look for penalty-free plans to convert universal or whole life insurance policies into term policies.

Q: Why do insurance prices fluctuate so much?
A: While it's very nerve-wracking to see insurance prices swing up and down, it's a factor of insurance company profits and losses from the last year, as well as modifications of their underwriting criteria.

Q: How can I save money on my insurance?
A: The best way to save money on any type of insurance is to compare different providers' insurance quotes on a regular basis. It's easy to do this on the Internet.

A proposal unveiled Wednesday by the health insurance industry would provide universal health coverage and hack away at medical costs through an outside group, and it has seen initial praise from an unlikely source.

The proposal, offered by the America's Health Insurance Plans, or AHIP, trade group, comes on the heels of a universal health care proposal offered by Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., as well as pledges by Sen. Ted Kennedy, D- Mass., to move quickly on the issue in 2009.

The keystone of the AHIP proposal is a goal to reduce growth in health care expenses throughout the U.S. market by 30% - a target Ignagni said would reduce health care costs by more than $500 billion from 2010 to 2014.

AHIP's plan won a positive remarks from Kennedy, who figures to play a large role in the debate next year as chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
"There's a spirit of optimism about our work to ensure quality, affordable health care for all Americans - and today's announcement adds to that optimism," Kennedy said in a statement. "The insurance industry has advanced serious proposals that deserve serious analysis and consideration."

The proposal represents an opening salvo for insurers, who have by and large agreed that universal coverage is necessary, in the health reform debate. Importantly, their proposal builds on the employer-based health coverage system - an approach favored by President-elect Barack Obama and Sen. Baucus.

"We're trying to have early input into what I'm sure will be a process of many elements and compromises," AHIP President Karen Ignagni said Wednesday.
Large insurers in the AHIP trade group include Aetna Inc. (AET), Humana Inc. ( HUM), Wellpoint Inc. (WLP) and Cigna Corp. (CI) and UnitedHealth Group.

The AHIP proposal suggests that Congress set a five-year cost goal and that a "public-private advisory group" would do the work of finding ways to cut spending.

Not surprisingly, the plan doesn't supplant the role of private insurers by including single-payer elements. For those earning less than 400% of the federal poverty level, the plan would offer "refundable, advanceable tax credits" to buy private insurance.

Ignagni said Wednesday that, unlike Baucus' proposal, the insurers' proposal wouldn't require that individuals buy insurance. She cited "the economic disruption in the country and hearing very specifically not only from large businesses but small businesses" as the primary reason for not including such a mandate.

"We didn't think that now was the time to recommend an employer mandate," Ignagni said.
Other elements of the AHIP plan would create an "essential benefits plan" for individuals and small business to purchase high-deductible insurance for wellness and prevention as well as acute care, as well as expansion of the state children's health insurance program, or SCHIP, and a streamlining of Medicaid, the federal government's health-coverage program for people below the federal poverty level.

By Patrick Yoest, Dow Jones Newswires

Half of Individual Policies Cost Less Than $130 Month According to eHealth Report

eHealthInsurance announced the release of a new study on the individual health insurance market. The findings appear in The Cost And Benefits Of Individual And Family Health Insurance Plans, a commissioned evaluation of eHealth Inc.'s data conducted by Forrester Consulting.

The analysis provides facts on actual premiums paid for individual health insurance and the nature of accompanying plan benefits. The research, based on a nationwide sample of over 227,000 individual and family (IFP) major medical policies that were purchased through eHealthInsurance and active in August 2007, revealed the following insights:
-- The average monthly premium for individual policies was $158
-- The average premium for family policies was $366
-- The average deductible for individual policies was $1,972
-- The average deductible for family policies was $2,610
-- The majority of family policies had annual premiums between $3,400 and $4,650
-- Half of all individual policy holders paid less than $130 per month for monthly premiums
-- More than half of all family policy holders paid less than $300 per month for monthly premiums
-- Women paid, on average, 18% more than men did for individual health insurance premiums
-- The average plan lifetime limit was $3.9 million
-- A vast majority of individual and family policyholders had lab x-ray, emergency, prescription and chiropractic coverage

For consumers, health insurance isn't a discretionary item, but rather something they need and can afford through the individual market. This is especially critical for those seeking alternatives to costly COBRA coverage.

The new analysis shows that on average, women are paying 18% more than men for individual health insurance premiums. Among major medical plans sold to individuals, women paid an average of $171 per month, compared to the average monthly premium of $145 paid by men.

The range of average monthly premiums in 2007 for individual plans across the United States was between $83 in North Dakota and $388 for New York residents, representing a monthly disparity of $305, or $3,660 per year. Regionally, the Northeast had the highest average monthly premium for individuals, at $239, while the Midwest had the lowest at $130. In the West, eHealthInsurance members paid on average $150 per month for an individual plan, while those in the South paid an average of $154 per month.(2)

The report found that in 2007, sixty percent of children's plans had monthly premiums of $100 or less, with an average monthly premium of $92 for individual children. Individual health insurance for children is an important and affordable option for families that may be shouldering a larger -- potentially more expensive -- portion of the dependent premium with employer-based health insurance.

New to the evaluation this year is data on eHealthInsurance members that have chosen an HSA-eligible plan. Of the 227,000 plans surveyed, 14 percent were HSA-eligible plans. Of these plans, the average premium for an individual plan was $133 and the average premium for a family plan was $302. The majority of HSA-eligible plan holders were between the ages of 25 and 44 years old.

The 2007 plan data referred to in the The Cost And Benefits Of Individual And Family Health Insurance Plans report is derived from over 227,000 individual and family (IFP) major medical policies purchased through eHealthInsurance that were active in August 2007. The report analyzes monthly premiums paid on individual and family major medical health insurance policies in 2005, 2006, and 2007, along with the benefits associated with those plans.

Insurance Agents View of Obama Health Plan

In the 1990's it was the now-defunct Health Insurers Association of America that led the charge against Hillary Clinton''s health care reform plan, marshalling the entire business community in a revolt that had at least a bit to do with the Republicans'' take-over of Congress in 1994. But as the health insurance community prepares for revived efforts at health care reform under president Obama, it is not the insurers who write the coverage, but the producers who sell it, that seem most alarmed by changes that could be coming.

America''s Health Insurance Plans greeted the Obama victory by declaring its members "support coverage for all Americans, coverage they can afford, and coverage they can keep," and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association said Obama''s health care agenda has "in common many of the same stepping stones to health care reform" as the Blues'' own plan.

But agents and brokers have been far less sanguine about what it could mean for them.Though several aspects of Obama''s health plan concern them, the issue that has benefits brokers most concerned is the proposed "National Health Insurance Exchange," a federal pooling mechanism open to all businesses and all individuals. By making the federal government the primary intermediary in the benefits market, and greatly curtailing the degree to which group plans can differ in cost or design, the NHIE, some fear, could effectively displace the agent community nationwide.

"None have been successful in lowering costs," Abadie said. "However, repeated failures have not dissuaded lawmakers."And it isn''t just life/health specialists who are paying attention. Agents and brokers that traditionally have been engaged primarily in commercial property/casualty increasingly have been relying on the profitable growth of health benefits as a hedge against the waning and waxing of the insurance pricing cycle."Employee benefits, for independent agents, is the fastest part of their book of business," said Robert Rusbuldt, president of the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America. "For a medium-size agency, employee benefits is now constituting a meaningful size of their book of business, and it''s the most profitable part of their book of business, because there''s no soft market."While many in the health insurance community were just as concerned about aspects of Sen. John McCain''s health plan – particularly its suggestion of capping the deductibility of employer-provided benefits – Joel Wood, senior vice president of government affairs with the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers, noted there also had been an understanding that McCain would have been unlikely to ever get his plans through a Democratic-controlled Congress. Obama will have other problems with his plan, including finding the money to pay for it, but congressional support will not be one of them. "To the extent that anybody''s going to pay for it, beyond those individuals making more than $250,000, who will pay for everything under the Obama plan, there has been this nebulous conversation about ''meaningful contributions'' from employers," Wood said. "We think that that could have the perverse effect of driving more people into the federal system, doing the Massachusetts-style thing, where you just pay your penalty up-front for not covering your own folks and then you wind up with a dysfunctional governmental system."

Voters back referendum on single-payer health care

Early results showed Cape Codders supported a nonbinding referendum stating that health care should be a universal human right and should be administered under a single-payer health insurance system available to all citizens of the state.

As of 1 a.m, 62 percent of voters in 18 Cape and Islands towns and Gosnold had voted in favor of the ballot initiative. Early results showed Cape Codders supported a nonbinding referendum stating that health care should be a universal human right and should be administered under a single-payer health insurance system available to all citizens of the state.

The question also appeared on ballots in other Massachusetts communities. Supporters said the current health-care system is too fragmented and expensive to work effectively. Detractors were concerned about government taking over health care.

The towns of Brewster, Chatham, Dennis, Eastham, Harwich, Orleans, Gosnold, Oak Bluffs and Nantucket all passed the no-binding referendum, as did the four precincts in Falmouth where it was on the ballot. Results were not in for Provincetown, Truro, Wellfleet, Yarmouth, Aquinnah, Chilmark, Edgartown, Tisbury and West Tisbury.

Under a single-payer system, a Medicare-type program or a nonprofit trust fund would provide insurance.