Health Insurance Competition Vanishing: Study Shows

[sweetroxie]

Health Insurance Competition Vanishing: Study
Consolidation has not helped patients, says AMA president

(HealthDay News) -- Competition in the health insurance industry is vanishing, according to an American Medical Association report that looked at data from 43 states and 313 metropolitan markets.

In 24 of the states, the two largest insurers had a combined market share of 70 percent or more. Last year, 18 of 42 states had that type of market situation.

Among the other findings:
In 54 percent of metropolitan markets, at least one insurer had a market share of 50 percent or more -- up from 40 percent of metropolitan markets the year before.
In 92 percent of metropolitan markets, at least one insurer had a share of 30 percent or more -- up from 89 percent of metropolitan markets the year before.
Ninety-nine percent of metropolitan markets are highly concentrated, according to federal merger guidelines, compared with 94 percent the year before.


The report, Competition in Health Insurance: A Comprehensive Study of U.S. Markets, was released this week.

"The near total collapse of competitive and dynamic health insurance markets has not helped patients," AMA President Dr. J. James Rohack said in a new release. "As demonstrated by proposed rate hikes in California and other states, health insurers have not shown greater efficiency and lower health care costs. Instead, patient premiums, deductibles and co-payments have soared without an increase in benefits in these increasingly consolidated markets."

Rohack added that a lack of competition in the health insurance industry "is clearly not in the best economic interest of patients," and the AMA wants the U.S. Department of Justice and state agencies "to more aggressively enforce antitrust laws that prohibit harmful mergers."

The AMA also wants the Department of Justice to consider the following measures: a retrospective study of health insurance mergers; research to identify the causes and consequences of health insurance market power; and creation of a system for predicting the effects that health insurance company mergers will have on patients and health care providers.

More information

The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality has more about health insurance.
-- Robert Preidt

SOURCE: American Medical Association, news release, Feb. 23, 2010

[FarCenter]

1. I thought that doctors only wanted to deal with a few insurance companies?

Otherwise the headaches of negotiating contracts with lots of health insurance companies and then dealing with the different rules, policies, and claims and billing practices becomes unmanageable.

[Demoiselle]

2. Another terrific argument for single payer.

Government single payer, of course.

[FarCenter]

3. Unless there is some artificial barrier to consolidation, you normally get to from 2 to 10 companies

In airliners, there are only 2 -- Boeing and Airbus.

In automobiles you have around 10 with reasonable market shares.

One is undesirable because there is no competition. It is pretty much guaranteed to stagnate and degenerate.

[NC_Nurse]

4. consolidation is a problem in many areas - not just healthcare...it's become the

norm for companies to just by up the competition instead of actually competing. Whatever happened to antitrust laws? I know health
insurance co's were exempted from them for some reason back in the day, but it's a problem in a LOT of industries now.

That's how we end up with these behemoth corporations controlling what we can eat, what we can watch, what we can use to access the internet, and etc.

It's scary shit.

[Greyhound]

5. Shocking, really.

They couldn't get the anti-trust laws repealed (very difficult to do) they they've just ignored them for decades.
:kick: & R

[Donnachaidh]

6. our government used to PROTECT us from Monopolies

Now they write legislation aiding and abetting the Monopolies.

[bvar22]

7. Surprise, surprise.

"When the BIG 5 Health Insurance Corporations look at 45 Million forced customers herded into the "Exchange" Pens, they will NOT "compete" against each other.
They WILL simply divide the herd and go about the shearing."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=7891168