Schwarzenegger Seeks to Curtail California Individual Health Insurance Market
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The news this week reports that though California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's $14.9 billion dollar health coverage plan was shut-down by the Senate earlier this year, he still plans to take on the individual health insurance market.
According to InsideBayArea.com, Schwarzenegger is nearing an agreement with Democratic legislators that would "reign-in" some of the costly practices associated with individual health insurance in California.
This would include limiting insurer profits on individual health insurance plans, requiring plans to provide a basic set of benefits, and restricting the ability of insurers to cancel insurance retroactively when consumers get sick.
And while this might not make it easy to offer coverage to all of the 5 million uninsured people in California, it certainly does a lot for the 3 million that rely on an individual health insurance plan to protect their health.
Individual plans have traditionally been harder to get, costlier, and offer less coverage than employer plans. Hopefully, some of the struggle faced by citizens who try to protect their health and well-being through individual plans will be "terminated" (sorry) by their determined Governor.