How guaranteed issue and community rating destroyed the individual health insurance market in eight states October 2005 |  |
Making health insurance in the U.S. more affordable and portable have been public policy challenges for many years. During the 1990s, many states experimented with forms of community rating (charging everyone the same price regardless of their age, health condition, etc.) and forms of guaranteed issue (must offer a policy if someone is willing to pay the premium) on health insurance companies that sell to the "small group" market (typically businesses too small to self-insure). Eight states--Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, and Washington--went even further, imposing those laws on companies that sell to individuals as well as to groups. Ten years have passed, enough time to tell what impact these laws have had. During 2004, in eight consecutive issues of Health Care News, a national monthly newspaper about health care in the U.S., Conrad Meier presented data and man-on-the-street opinions that present a clear and compelling picture of what has happened in these states. He finds that guaranteed issue and community rating, when applied to the individual insurance market, causes rates to rise, the number of insureds to decline, and the number of companies offering individual health insurance to fall. This book, which collects all eight feature stories and includes some newly updated statistics, is a valuable contribution to the national debate over health insurance regulation and the future of health care in the U.S.Published by the Council for Affordable Health Insurance and The Heartland Institute. |
