Medical Insurance Blog

Dissatisfaction With Medical Insurance Reform Is Growing!

With medical insurance reform legislation only 2 months old, Americans are showing a growing dissatisfaction with the new healthcare reform law. As some state lawmakers push to opt out of the federal requirements, recent national polls continue to display that Americans aggressively favor the law's repeal. 

The newly released Rasmussen poll shows that 63% of Americans now are in favor of repealing the medical insurance reform legislation. That number has skyrocketed, and is up 7 points since only last week and shows the largest increase in public support for repeal since the legislation became law 2 months ago.  

A recent CBS News poll showed that 47% of Americans still overwhelmingly disapprove of the new medical insurance reform law. What's more astonishing is that 36% of Americans believe that the law will harm, rather than help them. 

A new report released Thursday shows that the new high risk medical insurance pools, brought about by the new medical insurance law, does not have enough money to cover the more than 5.6 million Americans with pre-existing conditions. The report by the Center for Studying Health System Change found that the $5 billion that is set aside for these high-risk insurance pools would only cover about 200,000 people a year.

Towers Watson, a benefits consultant company, reported that most executives at America's largest companies think that the medical insurance reform law will increase costs, which will make them reduce coverage to make up the difference. Towers Watson took a poll of executives at 661 companies and learned that 94% of them share this belief.  Of those polled, 88% intend to shift those costs to their employees; while 74% believe that they will reduce medical care benefits and programs. Almost 75% of executives said they intend to continue offering shared cost medical insurance coverage to active employees. 

In 2010, the total medical bill for a family of four is $18,074.  In 2009, it was about $16,774.  Over the last 10 years, this is the highest cost increase.  While there are many factors to consider, the report reveals that these rising costs are largely driven by increases in the underlying costs of care.  

Further, despite passage of federal medical insurance reform, the underlying drivers of increasing medical care costs are not expected to immediately change.