Are Health Insurance Companies Inflating Costs, or Telling the Truth About Price Hikes?
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The most obvious and publicly known example is Anthem Blue Cross, which has faced White House condemnation for projecting a 39% increase in individual health insurance premiums this year.
In response, White House Secretary of Health and Human Services has asked several major health insurance companies - including Aetna, Cigna, United Health, and Anthem - to make their rate hikes publicly known, and to justify the rate hikes on the internet.
Her concern is that perhaps too much of the money these insurance companies get every year is going to CEO salaries, advertising, and more.
But the health insurance companies have one compelling argument on their side, and it's compelling because it's true: medical costs are going up.
As it says in MassLive.com's piece on health care, Medical costs, and in particular the cost of prescription drugs, are growing well beyond the rate of inflation, and since health insurance companies absorb much of these costs their argument makes some degree of sense.
Should we just take their word on it and pay up? Nope.
But we should take a look at the price tags attached to prescription drugs and health care devices. Too often Americans are forced to choose between expensive medications and basic needs like food and paying their rent/mortgage.
And if we can't control the costs of our medicine, insurance agencies will simply go out of business trying to make up the difference.
Hopefully upcoming legislation will include a means of minimizing costs both upfront in terms of insurance, and in the long term by controlling medical costs to begin with.