Between the time that credit card reform was signed into law last summer and legislation was fully enacted in early 2010, there were some ugly unintended consequences. Card issuers used that window of time to jack up interest rates, add fees, and cancel accounts. Now that we’ve entered a period when health care reform has passed but many of its programs won’t go into effect for a few years, are we bound to be subjected to similarly consumer-un-friendly consequences?
Nancy Pelosi seems to have anticipated this as a possibility. From a Washington Post blog:
Asked if insurance companies might raise their rates on health coverage and blame the increases on the new health-care bill, Pelosi said that the insurance companies should be aware that they’re not “automatically included” in the new health exchanges the bill creates.
“Unless they do the right thing, they’re not going in,” she said. “They will be relinquishing the possibility of having taxpayer-subsidized consumers in the exchange,” she said.
Under the new law, the health exchanges Pelosi referred to will be created in 2014. By pulling customers together, they will give individuals and companies a better chance of bargaining when they buy health insurance. Because the exchanges are expected to serve millions of new customers, insurance companies will want to be part of them.
I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for health insurance companies to “do the right thing.” So hopefully, it somehow really is in their business interests to not push premiums higher and higher.
I’m sure there are some math geeks on insurance company payrolls who are figuring out right now just how much they can get away with in terms of rate hikes—between now and 2014, and beyond.