Obamacare, Insurers, and Children
One of the biggest successes for Obama and his healthcare plan, was to mandate all insurers to allow parents to keep their children on their policies until age 26. However, there a few problems associated with that idea. In Florida, Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty has said that in his state UnitedHealthcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield have stopped issuing new policies that cover children individually, and in Oklahoma a couple of insurers have done the same. hotair.com
Later on in the year, the law requires insurers to accept all children, regardless of any medical problems they may have. This has them worried that parents may wait until their children are sick, to sign them up which is then possible that it will add the insurance companies unknown costs. The main types of coverage will not be affected, such as employer and government plans.
The policies in question, are the individual plans, so the insurers aren’t writing any new policies at this moment. It’s estimated that childrens’ plans acount for 8% of t he single plans sold.
“Our plans are very concerned about this,” said Alissa Fox, a top Washington lobbyist for the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. “If the law says that insurers have to take you any time, any place, some people will see that as an opportunity to wait until their children get sick to buy coverage.”
So now insurance companies are pressing the government to require an open enrollment period for the guaranteed children’s coverage, which is one of the main early benefits of the health law. This means parents could only get the guaranteed coverage during a designated month each year. And, the Administration hasn’t commented on the insurance company proposal.
Tags: Blue Cross Blue Shielf, Florida, Insurance Commissioner KevinMcCarty, insuring children, President Barack Obama, UnitedHealthcare
This entry was posted on Sunday, July 25th, 2010 at 8:31 am and is filed under Finance and Business, General, Health Care, In the News, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
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