Cute.
Blue Shield of California seeks rate hikes of as much as 59% for individuals
“Another big California health insurer has stunned individual policyholders with huge rate increases — this time it’s Blue Shield of California seeking cumulative hikes of as much as 59% for tens of thousands of customers March 1. Blue Shield’s action comes less than a year after Anthem Blue Cross tried and failed to raise rates as much as 39% for about 700,000 California customers.
San Francisco-based Blue Shield said the increases were the result of fast-rising healthcare costs and other expenses resulting from new healthcare laws.
. . . Nearly 1 in 4 of the affected customers will see cumulative increases of more than 50% over five months. . . Michael Fraser, a Blue Shield policyholder from San Diego, learned recently that his monthly bill would climb 59%, to $431 from $271. “When I tell people, their jaws drop and their eyes bug out,” said Fraser “
You can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, or democracy. But you cannot have both.
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The status quo is screwy. Didn’t I just hear that medical costs had risen by 9% for the year? But there is so much cost-shifting, it’s hard to reconcile medical costs to insurance costs.
Single payer :: Pay less
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Insurance premiums are insane, but of course they’re driven by health care costs. We’ll never be able to reconcile them until we can get into a non profit model. Which honestly I don’t think is possible any more in this country – at least not until we can break that ‘soicalist health care is evil!’ meme. Long way off I fear.
9% – why not – if our insurance is going up radically, why woulnd’t doctors and hospitals be facing the same increases?
It’s a god awful disgrace and the greatest danger to our economic stability and we refuse to face it honestly.
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A National Health Service is what America needs. It isn’t Communism.
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A national plan is the ONLY thing that will make it affordable. I was just reading a post over the TPM (very funny – here’s a link:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/16/you_are_doomed_but_you_knew_th/
From his post: “Yet we get inane, ignorant exhortations to save the youth of America from social insurance that would protect them and their dependents in old age, disability, and death.”
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