The Department of Health and Human Services has given $200,000,000 to states to help them fight unfair, unjustified or whatever you want to call health insurance premium rate increases.
Wouldn’t logic dictate that consumers would not buy from an insurer that has premiums so high they are unjustified and thus non-competitive? In NJ where for years no one could be turned down for coverage, there is at least one premium that is over $100,000 a year. Yikes, you could buy a bridge in Brooklyn for that.
Isn’t this like going to gas stations around the US and telling them charging $3.89 a gallon is unjustified as oil tops $115 a barrel and a good part of that $3.89 is federal and state taxes to boot? Hey, if I cross into NY and buy gas, it costs me nearly twenty cents a gallon more…we need a new federal agency to protect me from me.
Seems to me the $200 million would be better invested attacking the health care costs causing high premiums or perhaps in helping doctors become more efficient using electronic record keeping or using automated prescription drug tracking and prescribing devices. You could purchase over a quarter million such devices for $200 million and not only do they help save money they help assure better health care.
PS Why do the citizens of Rhode Island and Georgia have to help fund Utah’s management of its insurance markets, they can’t even buy coverage from a Utah based insurer.
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
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