patlee/RE: Mikkj - mental health insurance benefits.
Which insurance company do you think would not want to write policies for thousands or tens of thousands of people? Collective bargaining always works in business.
Insurance companies are only willing to provide policies for those individuals they hope do not get sick.
The reason why so many insurances are getting out of the Medicare HMO business is due to the way they are paid by the gov't. When they first started to flourish, they rec'd a capitated payment from the gov't for each person they insured, based on sex, age, etc. However, the insurance companies only marketed to the healthy population, so they made a huge profit. They actually prohibited certain people from joining - those on dialysis, for example. When the gov't was left with the "sick" Medicare population - they (ie, "we") paid more to treat the elderly. When the gov't changed the way they reimburse the insurance companies, they cried foul, and left the market, which left the seniors scurrying to go back to traditional Medicare, or some other health plan.
Pat - you asked me in another post, if I meant gov't intervention on a healthcare plan. I really don't care, but something needs to be done. You have millions of uninsured and even more underinsured individuals. Individual policies are cost prohibitive, so there will need to be some type of group health plan. There is a federal program that is run by the private insurers for Children with no health insurance - it is called the CHIP's program. That seems to work, but it is subsidized by the gov't.
It is unfair that our legislators have a "Cadillac" plan - that we as taxpayers pay for, and many of us are stuck with the "Yugo" plan. We need a universal plan that covers all. If the gov't has to intervene, so be it.
