Exchanged emails today with Jason Shafrin (host of this week's Health Wonk Review) regarding the "doings" on Wall Street. Jason, I should note, is a remarkably bright and able young man, who's just about completed his Ph.D. in health economics, and will soon be available for whatever company is smart (and swift) enough to grab him up.
Jason asked me if (and how) the bailout was affecting the health insurance business or any of my work, and wondered whether or not I supported the bailout. Since this is an insurance blog, not a finance or political one, I'll stick with the insurance related issues here.
The first part is simple: for the most part, the life insurance piece really hasn't affected me. I don't use AIG for that, so no problem. Likewise the health side: they're not in the small group or individual markets. As I remarked recently regarding this situation, I was incensed that the gummint (i.e. the taxpayer) essentially bought an insurance company, and lamented the sad state of affairs vis A M Best.
From an insurance perspective, the latest iteration from the Senate includes what I would consider a "poison pill:" mental health parity. This is an expensive and unnecessary intrusion of the government, which has no place in the discussion of whether or not we should be bailing out Wall Street. As I remarked to Jason, I think its inclusion inferred a surprisingly candid connection between our congress critters and the need for mental health coverage.
It's not that I believe that mental health is trivial, nor that it shouldn't be addressed. But as we've demonstrated numerous times here at IB, mandated benefits add to the overall cost of health insurance, and this one will most assuredly increase premiums, causing more folks to choose to be uninsured. Perhaps that's the intent, but who knows?
What I do know is that the fact that it had to be covertly added to a ginormous financial bill (pun in 10 did) speaks volumes about its true value.
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