No matter what you hear from the other side of the aisle, MNsure is working. How do we know?  Minnesota has one of the highest percentages of insured people at the lowest rates in the U.S.

There’s been a lot of press about PreferredOne leaving MNsure. Why did they do it? It was a business decision. Roger Feldman, a University of Minnesota public health profession, said PreferredOne made a mistake by offering too-low premiums in 2014 to attract market share. He’s studied what he calls “lowball bidding phenomenon”. He says fast enrollment growth like PreferredOne saw can strain a smaller insurer. And, that raises costs rather than lowers them. “In my experience this never works,” he said. “I’m actually not surprised that (PreferredOne) left.”

In the Sunday, September 21, 2014, StarTribune, business columnist Lee Schafer put PreferredOne’s decision in context by saying this:  “It’s hard to see how the exit of PreferredOne last week could be played as a failure for MNSure. After all, the MNsure state health insurance exchange is just another market. The low-price player wasn’t making any money, and it decided to get out. That’s sort of the way markets are supposed to work.”

Republican complain about MNsure, but they still haven’t told us what they’d replace it with. GOP gubernatorial candidate Jeff Johnson said he’d repeal it. That’d send us back to the days when insurance companies wrote the rules an people were denied coverage for pre-existing conditions, paid for preventive care and had coverage that was capped. Minnesotan doesn’t wan to return to a time of insurance company abuses. They want to move forward with our current healthcare reforms because it’s helping all of us receive they care we need at lower prices for families and businesses.

health insurance · MNsure

GOP U.S. Senate candidate says he wants to deregulate the health insurance industry

Investment banker Mike McFadden revealed to Minnesotans his most concrete idea for health care to date: he wants to see the health insurance industry “deregulated,” a move that would let insurance companies have free rein to do whatever they want — no matter the human or financial cost.

At a recent press conference, McFadden was asked to get “a lot more specific” on his “solution to health care.” McFadden, who wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act and said last summer he was “working with a team of [health care] experts,” told reporters he wanted to deregulate the health insurance industry.

MCFADDEN: …The second is there are federal regulations that need to be looked at.  One is insurance, I’d like to see the insurance agency, industry, deregulated.

Watch the video of McFadden’s health care remarks here: http://youtu.be/e_9gV7_pqwg

McFadden isn’t the first politician to call for deregulation of the insurance industry; Congresswoman Michele Bachmann is also a strong proponent for the concept.

Politicians like McFadden and Bachmann who want to deregulate the health insurance industry would allow insurance companies to charge women more than men for coverage, allow them to impose arbitrary annual and lifetime limits, allow them to spend as much or as little of premium dollars on actual health care, and undo requirements that force insurers to cover basic services like mammograms, colon cancer screening, and prenatal care.

“Investment banker Mike McFadden’s idea to let insurance companies do whatever they want might be good for big business, but it’s a disaster for Minnesota families,” said DFL Chairman Ken Martin. “McFadden wants to turn back the clock on commonsense consumer protections that save Minnesotans money and, in some cases, their lives.”

McFadden has also said he wants to let companies sell health insurance across state lines, which according to the Washington Post would “make insurance more expensive for the sick and cheaper for the healthy, and lead to more healthy people with insurance and fewer sick people with insurance. It’s a great proposal if you don’t ever plan to be sick, and if you don’t mind finding out that your insurer doesn’t cover your illness.”

health insurance · insurance deregulation · insurance industry · Mike McFadden · US Senate