Obamacare Just Gets Better and Better

As part of health care reform, consumers are supposed to be getting clear and simple summary of benefits and of an insurance policy.

This means things like deductibles, maximum out of pocket, and co-payments are supposed to be presented to the consumer in a simple and readable format.

The rather unsurprising development in all this is that Obama administration caved to insurers on the most important number of all, and there is no requirement for insurers and employers to tell people what they have to pay in premiums:

The Department of Health and Human Services recently announced that health insurers and employers must provide more information to consumers shopping for health insurance. The ensuing coverage, shall we say, was a classic case of journalistic bungling. Reporters took what HHS officials fed them and crafted their pieces for public consumption. But the stories were confusing—in some cases flat-out wrong—and did not exactly offer the clearest of explanations about what’s supposed to be a clearer process for buying health coverage. I’d wager the public didn’t understand much of what the media dished out, and probably won’t until they actually start shopping for coverage again in the fall and find the government hasn’t made it easier after all.

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The report that HHS released to the media discloses some important numbers: the amount of the deductible; what services don’t count toward satisfying it; what’s not included in the out-of-pocket limits, like premiums and charges from doctors who balance the bill; the copays; and, probably most important, the amount of coinsurance—the percentage of a bill patients must pay, which is increasing with each passing year.

But insurers and employers do not have to tell consumers how much a policy costs—in other words, no premium information has to be given. Yep, that’s right—the key piece of information needed to make a good decision is missing. When insurers design a policy, they consider the interplay of coinsurance, copays, deductibles, coverage, and, of course, the premium, which lets them know what price point will make a consumer say “yes.” Price is the bottom line for consumers, but it’s poison for sellers, who fear a shopper might choose a policy with a lower price, other things being equal. So much for that price competition that was to solve all the ills of U.S. health care.

This was followed up by the media almost entirely simply reprinting the HHS press releases, which means that this crucial omission was largely ignored:

What was needed from the media was analysis and sharp questioning about what these new disclosures would really mean for consumers in terms of ease of use and availability during the shopping process. We know consumers hate shopping for insurance, and take shortcuts to finish the task as fast as they can. But instead of helping them through this dreaded chore, the media gave the Department of Health and Human Services a free pass.

This is not a product of a biased media, this is a product of lazy media, which is the real problem with the media, particularly given the financial pressures present in today's media environment, because a lazy media is a cheaper media.