According to a Washington Post article, money for high risk pools is running low. Per the article, “Obama administration officials said…that the state-based ‘high-risk pools’ set up under the 2010 health-care law will be closed to new applicants [no later than March], depending on the state.” Click here to read the full article.
I did a count many years ago of the number of high risk pools that had been set up and failed since the 70′s. As I recall the count was over 60. These pools run out of money very very fast.
Want a good laugh? The reason this program lasted as long as it did was that the premium charges to join these pools were so high many of the people who needed it most couldn’t afford the premium. Perfect.
It’s hard to criticize the notion of high risk pools, but the answer to the problem of the uninsurable is not more risk pools.
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Tom Emerick
Coming soon: Cracking Health Costs, the book, to be published by John Wiley & Sons. The authors are myself and Al Lewis. Click here to pre-reserve at a deeply discounted price.
Tom Emerick is the President of Emerick Consulting, LLC, and Partner and Chief Strategy Officer with Laurus Strategies, a Chicago-based consulting firm, and cofounder of Edison Health. Prior to starting his consulting career, Tom was with Walmart Stores, where his last position was Vice President, Global Benefit Design, which involved designing and managing benefits for over 1.3 million employees in the U.S., and 300,000 plus in international. For about six years, Tom also headed up Walmart’s Six Sigma and process improvement initiatives. Prior to Walmart, Tom had positions with Burger King Corporation, British Petroleum, and American Fidelity Assurance Company. In 2009, Tom was named by Healthspottr as one of the top 100 innovators in healthcare the US for his work on medical ethics. In December 2012, Tom was listed in Forbes.com as one of 13 unsung heroes changing healthcare forever.
Bear in mind these are not designed to produce a profjit, and it’s my understanding the the PCIP rates were cheaper than the existing rates in use by a number of states including Texas and Colorado, and if the claimant didn’t know, their provider should have, that’s one way to guarantee some payment.
Please expand and cite references for your comment: “Remember our peer countries spend half per person what we spend and are consistently getting better results.”
Source is the OECD “Health at a Glance” reports. While we lap our peer countries in per person health spending, and their risk indicators such as obesity are increasing rapidly, US life expectancy is declining rapidly relatively.
There’s more but I don’t want to get too wordy in a reply.
Thanks for reading CHC.
Tom