Feds to decide what benefits health insurers must cover

[babylonsister]

Feds to decide what benefits health insurers must cover

By Julie Appleby, Kaiser Health News | Kaiser Health News

snip//

The Obama administration faces a tough balancing act: The benefits package must be broad enough to be comprehensive but not so broad as to be unaffordable. Patient advocates and industry lobbyists are drawing up wish lists for items they want covered, including autism therapy, obesity treatments, infertility treatments and unlimited chemotherapy visits.

"This is an invitation for all kinds of lobbying from every conceivable disease group and provider group in the country," said Joe Antos, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, a research center in Washington.

The Department of Health and Human Services has asked the independent Institute of Medicine for advice. A 17-member institute panel will begin meeting Wednesday behind closed doors, with public sessions scheduled for Thursday and Friday. Panel members include economists, consumer advocates, a state health commissioner and a former CEO of insurer WellPoint. By fall, it'll make recommendations on factors HHS should consider in drawing up the benefit package.

The required package affects all policies to be sold in the new state-based insurance exchanges. Those marketplaces, which are to start operating in 2014, initially will be open only to those who buy individual and small-group policies. New policies sold to individuals and businesses outside the exchanges also would be affected.

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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2011/01/10/106515/feds-to-decide-what-benefits-health.html

[kestrel91316]

1. ZOMG, freeper heads gonna esplode when insurers are forced to

cover basic healthcare and preventive measures!!!!!!

[flpoljunkie]

2. R's goal: HSA's, catastrophic policies sold across state lines with no regulation, but big profits!

These policies have been very profitable for insurance companies. And, of course, unnecessary--and providing very little cost savings--tort reform.'

[golfguru]

3. My head is also exploding and I am not even a freeper

My health insurer gave me a Christmas present of 30% increase in my premiums.

The HCR bill is a corporatist crock of steaming heap.

For profit private insurers get a gift of millions of additional paying
customers with mandates. But there is not a single restraint on premium
hikes in the bill. They are free to increase your premiums as high as necessary until their profit goals are met.

The HCR bill prohibits drug importation! WOW what a bonanza for big pharma!

No competition to private health insurer's from PUBLIC OPTION to keep rate hikes under control. Any competition from other insurer's across state
lines is prohibited. So each state has it private corporations operating
as monopolies without outside competition.

To be sure there are some very good things in the bill such as no cancellations
and no rejections. However both of these are NOT mutually exclusive with the
above listed items absent in the bill.

[dsc]

4. actually there is a premium restraint in the bill

by making them spend 83% of premiums on health care costs that restrains premiums to 1.20 times medical costs.

[TheKentuckian]

5. That is not a price control, in fact it likely encourages increased premiums

Profits can only be increased by getting more money in the system.