Category: Insurance
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Health Insurance Check-Up; Migration to Medicaid
The number of Virginians buying health insurance as individuals is shrinking and may shrink more, with two trends getting most of the credit: Expansion of Medicaid eligibility and a change in the law that allowed those in business as sole proprietors to buy policies in the small group marketplace. Individual coverage peaked at 418,000 Virginians…
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Long-Term Care: A Great Bet If Made Long Ago
It is just like your econ professor told you – insurance is nothing but a bet. It is a bet you often don’t want to win, but in one field you had a great chance of winning simply by hanging around and continuing to breathe. That field is (or at least was) long-term care coverage.…
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Are PBMs Killing Pharmacies, Hiking Medicaid?
A form letter mailed this month announced the death of another local independent pharmacy, this one in the bustling community of Nellysford. Residents of Nelson County’s Rockfish Valley, including those in the large Wintergreen community, will join plenty of other rural areas in the U.S. without a pharmacy close by.
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Boomergeddon’s Coal Mine Canary Sings Warning
Angry consumer complaints are starting to appear on a growing case record at the State Corporation Commission, which opened the case on its own authority to demand insurance company presentations on the long-term care product market and its history of massive rate hikes. A typical comment so far: “This frankly, appears to be a ploy…
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More Medical Insurance Mandates on the Way
Kara Murdock, 28, lost her right hand and forearm five years ago due to a blood clot, and she has been trying without success to get a prosthetic. Her health plan turned her down when she was covered by her parents’ insurance, and now that she’s on Medicaid under the Medicaid-expansion program, she wants to…
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Republicans Endorse Autism Bill. In Other Business, They Buy Pig in Poke
Republican leaders in the House of Delegates have endorsed a bill to expand coverage for children with autism. Existing law requires health insurers to reimburse autism treatments for children between 2 and 10 years old only. The proposed law would eliminate the cap. The expanded coverage, which would help an estimated 10,000 people, would cost…
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Filling Virginia’s Flood Insurance Gap
by Lisa Miller A new Federal Emergency Management Agency report is shocking: 69% of Virginia homes in high risk flood zones do not have flood insurance. Another report reveals 17% of Virginia properties should be listed in high risk zones – but are not. Congress’s continued failure to reform an increasingly expensive National Flood Insurance…
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Local Governments’ Alarming Capital Spending Ratios
I’ve been strenuously making the point over the past several months that there are many ways for state and local governments to run hidden deficits. One of those is deferred maintenance — an issue that has played out most prominently in the debate over aging, run-down school buildings. What I never realized is that there…
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Health Insurance Rates Up 16% Next Year
The Affordable Care Act isn’t looking so affordable. Health insurance plans in the Affordable Care Act’s Virginia marketplace could increase in cost by an average of 16% next year, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The numbers are based upon rate changes that insurers have submitted to the Bureau of Insurance ahead of a State Corporation Commission…
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More Visibility for Health Plan Mergers, Please
by James A. Bacon Virginia consumers are not particularly torqued about two proposed mergers between leading health care insurers — only 20% of respondents to a poll sponsored by Virginia Consumer Voices for Healthcare (VCVH) were even aware of the proposals — but that didn’t stop 87% from being “very” or “somewhat” concerned by the impending consolidations when…
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Virginia Obamacare Update
Anthem Healthkeepers, with 190,000 enrollees in Virginia, is filing for an average 15.8% hike in its 2017 Affordable Care Act premiums. Innovation Health, with 61,000 enrollees, is seeking a 9.4% increase. United Health, with 6,900 members, wants a 17.9% increase. The overall weighted average increase request in Virginia, according to Investors Business Daily, is 17.9%. I thought…
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What Went Wrong with Long-Term Care Insurance?
by James A. Bacon I am one of those schlubs who takes out insurance policies to protect against bad things happening. One eventuality I worry about is the need for long-term care. The longer you live and the more chronic conditions you develop, the greater the odds – about 50/50 for a 60-year-old today — that you’ll wind…
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The Rise of the New Artisan Class
Cathy Vaughn took the big leap a couple of years ago of going into business for herself as an artisan working in copper. While fabricating trellises, tryptics, candelabras and chinoiserie, she developed a new technique, which, as far as she knows, is a first — creating images upon copper plate from the chemicals found in leaves.…
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Surfing the Data Tsunami
by James A. Bacon Data Crush is coming, and it gives us a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform aging and decrepit institutions, designed for the mid-20th century. As futurist Chris Surdak argues in the previous post, the “digital trinity” — mobile computing, social media and advanced analytics — is sweeping all before it. Digital-driven innovation is outpacing the…
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How the Digital Trinity is Transforming Health Insurance
by Christopher Surdak, JD In his recent post, “The Politics of Big Data,” my friend and colleague Jim Bacon asked some pertinent questions regarding how our government, and our society at-large, can put data to use for the common good. In a fairly short discourse Jim hit on a range of explosive topics, from privacy, data…