Health care reform bill would send insurance rates soaring

Just as the Senate was on the verge of passing a health care reform bill, a study by the insurance industry–which had been backing the project–says that it would greatly increase premiums:

At the heart of the industry’s complaint is a decision by lawmakers to weaken the requirement that millions more Americans get coverage. Since the legislation would ban insurance companies from denying coverage on account of poor health, many people will wait to sign up until they get sick, the industry says. And that will drive up costs for everybody else.

Insurers are now raising possibilities such as higher premiums for people who postpone getting coverage, or waiting periods for those who ignore a proposed government requirement to get insurance and later have a change of heart.

The drama threatened to overshadow Tuesday’s scheduled vote by the Senate Finance Committee on a 10-year, $829-billion plan that Baucus has touted as the sensible solution to America’s problems of high medical costs and too many uninsured.

The Baucus bill is still expected to win Finance Committee approval. The insurance industry is trying to influence what happens beyond the vote, when legislation goes to the floor of the House and Senate, and, if passed, to a conference committee that would reconcile differences in the bills. . . .

The study projects that the legislation would add $1,700 a year to the cost of family coverage in 2013, when most of the major provisions of the Baucus bill would be in effect.

Premiums for a single person would go up by $600 more than would be the case without the legislation, it estimated.

Democrats are accusing the insurance industry of betrayal and are in a state of outrage. But how could forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions, forbidding them from turning anyone down, and allowing consumers to wait to get insurance until they get really sick NOT raise premiums?