NY Senate Budget Resolution Omits Prior Approval
Posted March, 22 2010 by arianne
Today the New York State Senate rejected the Governor’s proposal to regulate health insurance premium hikes (otherwise known as prior approval).
Currently, insurers in New York can file an insurance increase and use it. Since the “file and use” rate system was put into full effect in 2000, insurance premium rates have grown faster than the incomes of individuals and small businesses and far faster than the general consumer price index. In the past ten years alone, New York insurance premiums have increased by 92% while median worker earnings have only increased by 14%.
HCFANY strongly urges every New York State Senator to vote against the Senate budget resolution today.
1 Comments
Jill Herendeen • Mar.26.2010 at 10:56:am
This is a good reason, by itself, why health care shouldn’t have anything to do with a private insurance industry. Most of the industrialized world NOW has universal health care, and they spend half of what we’re currently spending (regardless of whether we’re actually getting any of the health care that we’re subsidizing). They do this by removing profit from the picture, even when they HAVE private insurance companies. Some countries save money by making the gov’t directly investigate questions of malpractice, rather than farming the job out to for-profit industries. (If the gov’t certifies the competency of clinicians, why shouldn’t it investigate allegations of incompetency itself?) And as for actual health insurance…well, what does any private health insurance company add to health CARE that justifies its jacking up the price of that care by 20-30%?