Health Care Bill Scare

Interesting post from one of the guys at JammieWearingFool: "Congress Voted To Fire Me Last Night"

Their vote in essence caused me, and just about everybody else who works for a health insurance company, onto the unemployment rolls. It doesn't matter whether you are a claims adjuster, work a call center, sell the policies or some other job and you work for a private health insurance company or you are one of the evil heads of the corporation, your shelf life for having a job if the Pelosicare bill becomes fact is about five years.

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If you currently have a private insurance policy, starting in 2011 your premiums will double if you are lucky, and in most cases triple. It is unavoidable.

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My advice to anyone who works for a private insurance company is to dig out the resume, update it and try like hell to land one of the government jobs.

Read it all if you dare! Another, related view here: "PelosiCare's price controls will bankrupt health insurers in one year"
The blog points to text that in the bill that sets the minimum allowable loss ratio at 85%

An 85% loss ratio, as mandated by PelosiCare, would bankrupt insurers within a year. No mandated loss ratio has ever come close to 85%.

Graph taken from Here.

Yipe! Is he right? The issue seems complicated. Here is an interesting paper (pdf)

ABSTRACT: This paper examines the use and abuse of the medical loss ratio in the contemporary health care system and health policy debate. It begins with a survey of the ways in which the medical loss ratio has been interpreted to be something it is not, such as a measure of quality or efficiency. It then analyzes key organizational features of the emerging health care system that complicate measures of financial performance, including integration between payers and providers, diversification of payers across multiple products and distribution channels, and geographic expansion across metropolitan and state lines. These issues are illustrated using medical loss ratios from a range of nonprofit and for-profit health plans. The paper then sketches a strategy for improving the public's understanding of health plan performance as an alternative to continued reliance on the flawed medical loss ratio. This strategy incorporates data on structure and process, service quality, and financial performance.