Obama to Let Insurers Raise Fees for Sick Children

Obama to Let Insurers Raise Fees for Sick Children Scotty Starnes | October 15, 2010 at 8:00 AM | Tags: Chief Actuary for The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Democrats, health care premiums, Kathleen Sebelius, Obamacare, President Obama, raise fees on sick children, Robert Foster | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/pvnFC-353

Now who is it again that continues to reward those so-called evil insurance companies? Obama potentially gave them 40+ million new clients along with higher insurance premiums and now he is allowing insurers to raise fees for sick children? More side effects from ObamaCare.

The New York Times reports:

The Obama administration, aiming to encourage health insurance companies to offer child-only policies, said Wednesday that they could charge higher premiums for coverage of children with serious medical problems, if state law allowed it.

Earlier this year, major insurers, faced with an unprofitable business, stopped issuing new child-only policies. They said that the Obama administration's interpretation of the new health care law would allow families to buy such coverage at the last minute, when children became ill and were headed to the hospital.

In September, the administration said that insurers could establish open-enrollment periods — for example, one month a year — during which they would accept all children.

Now, on Wednesday, the administration, answering a question raised by many insurers, said they could charge higher premiums to sick children outside the open-enrollment period, if state laws allowed such underwriting, as many do.

Insurers "can adjust their rates based on health status until 2014, to the extent state law allows," said Jay Angoff, director of the Office of Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The difficulty in preserving access to child-only insurance policies is the latest example of unintended consequences of the new law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The problem may be solved in 2014. If Democrats can beat back Republican efforts to dismantle the law, most Americans will be required to carry health insurance, starting in 2014, and insurers will be required to accept all applicants, regardless of pre-existing conditions.

The new policy statement, issued Wednesday by Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, came with a fresh blast of criticism of the insurance industry.

"Unfortunately," Ms. Sebelius said, "some insurers have decided to stop writing new business in the child-only insurance market, reneging on a previous commitment made in a March letter to 'make pre-existing condition exclusions a thing of the past.' "

This is what happens when politicians refuse to read the bill before voting it into law. Robert Foster, the Chief Actuary of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has informed America that medical costs and insurance premiums are going up, not down as Obama and the Democrats claim.

Now they are attacking the insurance companies again for the "unintended consequences" of their own ObamaCare law. Obama's cost curve continues to go UP, not down. Kathleen Sebelius needs to hurry up and re-educate the citizens.

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