Comments on: WE DON’T NEED AN INDIVIDUAL MANDATE TO BUY HEALTH INSURANCE: PART 2 – WHAT THE SENATE AND HOUSE BILLS MISS

By: Health Care Reform Mandate to Buy Health Insurance: Part 1 | Stephen S. S. Hyde On Health Care Reform Topics

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 16:41:45 +0000

[...] insurance mandates are unfair, unworkable, and fortunately unnecessary (as I will discuss in Part 2). What we really need is universal access to health insurance that virtually everyone wants to [...]

By: Massachusetts Health Reform Experiment--Fixing Romney Care | Stephen S. S. Hyde On Health Care Reform Topics

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 17:27:57 +0000

[...] and per Ms. Strassel, he’s done a pretty bad job of it, maintaining that mandates are necessary (they’re not) and that cost-control was never a goal (it was). For all his intelligence, experience, money, and [...]

By: Stephen Hyde

Stephen Hyde — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:35:25 +0000

Steve Replies: The space constraints for my article prevented me from going into the level of detail addressed by your excellent questions, although I did so in my book “Cured!The Insider’s Handbook for Health Care Reform.”

In general, I like the idea of all men being able to enroll in health plans with special male-health benefits, women in plans similarly offering female-specific benefits, and children in plans that are most suitable for each of them. (Being able to allow this flexibility is further reason supporting the age and gender factors included in my recommended BAGLE-rating system.) Thus, marriage or same-sex partnerships would be irrelevant.

At the same time, I have no problem with insurers also offering plans that cover the entire family, with the family deciding whether to enroll as a group or individually.

Children who are not enrolled by their parents would be subject to late-enrollment penalties during their remaining childhoods, but would, upon reaching the age-of-majority (usually 18), be permitted to enroll de novo as adults without any such penalties. Newborns and recent immigrants would be allowed to enroll mid-year within a window of opportunity such as you suggest. Similarly, people who move outside their insurers’ service areas would be able to switch plans mid-year.

By: Randy Dipner

Randy Dipner — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:38:41 +0000

Should we consider each individual as an individual for purposes of medical insurance? That is, do we rid ourselves of the spouse/family concerns that are inherent in the current system and reduce the system instead to a truly individual insurance system? If we do not there are any number of complications introduced into the system. At what point is a family member no longer part of the family insurance plan? Is a child covered forever under the plan until the family decides the child is no longer a part of the family or do we install an artificial age at which the individual is excluded? And, if so, are there exceptions in the case of a child with a disability that remains in the care of a parent or a career college student? And what about the child that returns to the family fold after a stint of finding him or herself? What about same sex partners? Are the a family? Similarly do we have to install a long list of “qualifying events” that allow a member of the family to get insurance outside the open enrollment period – divorce, minor graduation, birthday of a minor becoming an adult, etc?

When does the penalty accrue to the individual? For example, a child is born in mid-year. Does the family have a 45 day grace period to enroll the child? What if the family decides not to enroll the child, the child never has an illness or injury and on becoming independent wants to enroll? Does that individual pay the enrollment penalty from birth based on the poor judgment of the parent?