Council For Affordable Health Insurance: Advice- non coverage

http://www.cahi.org/cahi_contents/resources/pdf/HealthInsuranceMandates2008.pdf is an interesting report from the point of view of lists, presenting a state by state listing of governmental mandates requiring insurance coverage for certain patient needs, meaning health insurance policies in the specific state with a mandate would have to cover the cost of the specified medical service.

Here's the quiz: The point of view of the article is stated: "While mandates make health insurance more comprehensive, they also make it more expensive because mandates require insurers to pay for care consumers previously funded out of their own pockets."
So which stakeholder group do you think prepared this report? Consumers? Our goal is help in paying for needed medical care, attacking laws that require our insurers to help pay for that care would not be in our best interest. Politicians? Politicians deal in gross numbers. They want more people insured and care less about the quality of the coverage. Medical service providers? They want mandates, because mandates mean that policies must include payment for their services. Insurance companies? Insurance companies want to get the most in premium dollars and cover the fewest services...Bingo. In fact, the CAHI, Council of Affordable Health Insurance is an insurance industry group.

Insurance companies have concluded in their endless greed that state mandates for coverage are also economically unwise when provisions for guaranteed issue are also legislated (where health insurers are required to accept individuals for health insurance coverage) and where people are taken as they come in a "community rating" or "modified community rating" that includes an overall assessment of risk rather than an individual rating.

In a revolting description of our new generation that is offered less health insurance for more money and works in an economy where wages are awful for many young people, CAHI in its arrogance refers to a "slacker mandate" to describe unmarried dependent or student coverage up to the age of 30. Yet CAHI cannot effectively disguise its own agenda because the same report argues against covering people who actually do or might need help paying for health services (you know, the sick, the old) by bemoaning their lack of profit from those same individuals they just referred to as slackers (young, healthy people) who cannot afford and therefore "cancel their coverage, leaving the pool smaller and sicker." We get it guys, pay more for less, but since name-calling has begun...

So what we have here is a report finger-pointing at state governments that actually dare to require that health insurance policies cover the range of illness and citizen status that lines the insurance company pockets. Lest you be sucked into this finger-pointing, understand that consumers who are sick are also considered a drain on resources as are the young, and just about everyone else these clowns can include. Finally, after presenting their argument in favor of policies that create a tax out of health insurance premiums...people should have to buy health insurance but should have no say in what is covered, if anything...these people then reassure us...don't worry..."Just because we list something as a mandate doesn't necessarily mean it should be excluded from a standard health insurance policy..." Yeah, we believe you insurance companies.

The scary part is the report's conclusion that "some legislators are getting CAHI's message" so we'd better make sure that the consumer message is out there too: If health insurance does not help pay for illness, if we have to anticipate our own medical costs (in other words become our own health insurers) and choose what we will have coverage for based on cost, then health insurance is no longer insuring us against the risk of illness, it is working like a medical discount for anticipated care...get rid of it.