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A new post on the Health Affairs blog details how CalPERS kept costs down in Sacramento through a "virtual" ACO with insurers and providers.

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Insurance and Uninsured

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Costs Higher Than Expected for Calif. High-Risk Pool

Health care costs for California's temporary high-risk insurance program have reached more than $37,000 per patient annually, according to program administrators. The program -- established in 2010 under the federal health reform law -- was expected to cost roughly $12,000 per patient annually. The higher-than-expected prices could be driven by demand for coverage of various tests and treatments that patients have waited to obtain.

"High-Risk Insurance Pool Helps ... But What About Cost?" (Menghrajani, "The California Report," KQED, 2/24).

Reader Comments:
  • 3
  • 03/08/2012
  • Paul Rosenberger

This is just a verification of the outright lies that Obama makes on a regular basis. He feels he doesn't need to be truthful because his liberal base doesn't care about what he actually does - only about what he says.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of lies that Obama has come out with, especially about Healthcare costs and Obamacare. If Obamacare isn't rescinded, the actual cost of health insurance under him will TRIPLE within the 1st year of enactment, and you will hear him say "I didn't know how deep the problem was" as an excuse! Where have I heard that before???

  • 2
  • 02/29/2012
  • Tim Colling

This is a great example of why we cannot trust ANY of the numbers used by President Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid when they lied to the public about Obamacare not leading to huge new government spending. It's all just fantasy. Making employers pay for healthcare for all is just silly also.

If the government REALLY cared about equality in healthcare, then all the government employees and all the union members should have to give up their separate, gold-plated cadillac coverage and share in the same healthcare pool that everyone else will eventually have to be in. Then we'll see how things turn out (and it won't be pretty).

  • 1
  • 02/29/2012
  • Barbara Hanson

Insurance carriers take the estimated cost of health care for a group, divide by the number of participants, and charge roughly that amount for coverage. Underwriters determine the risk of higher costs for specific pre-existing conditions, and the resulting groups have differing levels of premiums based on their level of risk. Our government seems to often under estimate the cost of care for those people w/ conditions experienced insurance companies know will cost a lot, then taxpayers pay the shortfall. The retracted CLASS Act is a similar instance.
Until ALL of us are able to get health insurance, creating a pool of money equal to the cost of all of our needs, taxpayers will be paying their own health insurance premiums as well as higher taxes to subsidize those unable to pay the higher impaired risk rates. It is right and proper that everyone have access to health care.
Single payer or government models like those in other countries seem to work better than our patchwork model.



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