OPINION

Mike it will be just like shopping for auto, life, fire, house and every other form of insurance that is sold across state lines.

Besides the lack of cross-state sales the other thing that hurts health insurance is having to sell policies that must provide coverage to items mandated by the states. IIRC New Jersey has the highest number of mandates.

Customers should be able to choose what they want covered. Why should I pay for acupuncture, chiropractic treatment and other non-traditional practices if I don't use them?

The average profit margins for health insurance companies are 4.3%. People want much cheaper health insurance but how much cheaper can it possibly get? Blue Cross of Texas is already a non profit but you aren’t going to get cheap rates there.

This is why Obama’s talk of insurance companies making “billions” in profits in the last few weeks is such a fraud. The profit margins aren’t any better than in other industries and you simply can’t make health care cheaper by going after insurance companies.

According to the Congressional Budget Office (Link [1]) more than half the increase in costs of healthcare is due to new medical technology. This means that because physicians can now treat or have better treatment for health problems, that the cost of health care is going up. The biggest reason for the increase of medical insurance is that medicine is curing too many medical conditions. Democrats can’t really do anything about this; they are just acting like the can.

[1] cbo.gov/ftpdocs/89xx/doc8947/01-31-TechHealth.pdf

Sarah Palin's been crossing Alaska state line into socialist Canada for her health care.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/08/palin-crossed-border-for_n_490080.html

If insurance companies get to sell policies across state lines then it should come with the price of absolving their anti-trust exemption. Actually the exemption should be removed regardless. Anyone know what would be the insurance companies objection to losing the anti-trust exemption? (and why it's there in the first place?)

@Michael

"... but for the most part, it's coming from GOP lawmakers who have taken billions in campaign dollars from big insurers."

Of course the Democrats, pure as the driven snow, have not accepted any money from big insurers.

opensecrets.org/news/2009/06/diagnosis-reform.html

"Starting in the 2008 election cycle, the health sector has given more money to Democrats--who had seized control of Congress in 2006--than to Republicans, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. This was the first time since the 1992 election cycle, right before the Clinton administration's failed health care reform attempt, that the health sector made Democrats its financial darlings.

"In the 2008 election cycle, the sector gave $90.7 million, or 54 percent of the total, to Democratic candidates and party committees, compared to $76.6 million to Republicans. That difference is even more pronounced in the first three months of 2009, when Democrats collected 60 percent of the total $5.4 million in contributions*. Obama, who made health care reform a large part of his presidential election platform, brought in $18.8 million from the health care sector in the 2008 election cycle--far more than any other presidential hopeful. Money follows power as the industries ride the tides of Obama-styled change."

Michael, you answered your own question."Insurers are pushing for this reform, and I suspect it's because it would enable them to offer fewer choices, not more." That is why I want it, if the insurance companies don't, then it must be good for me, and you too.

The lack of any hard analysis by TDMN of the health care politics moving now is journalistic malpractice.

When was the last time (or first, for that matter)that your paper reported that the Obamacare bill pays for 6 years of benefits with 10 years of taxes AND the never-will-happen 500 billion cut in Medicare in order to reach it's "deficit neutral" claim.

Michael - Millions of Texans already get their insurance from out-of-state carriers through employer-provided coverage. Get out of the Blue Cross mentality and recognize that Aetna (Connecticut), United Healthcare (Minnesota), Cigna (Pennsylvania), etc. insure huge numbers of Texans, apparently without much difficulty in complying with state regulations here and elsewhere.

My policy, now a COBRA, is administered by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas, but the policy is actually written by Blue Cross Blue Shield of California, where my company was located. This is true for many people who work for companies headquartered out of state.

Nancy Pelosi said the following yesterday about the health care bill they are planning to foist upon an unwilling public. You can find the video on YouTube....

"It's going to be very, very exciting. But we have to pass the bill, so you can find out what's in it, away from the fog of the controversy."

That's right folks, she actually said we have to enact a program in order to find out what the actual terms and conditions are.....talk about arrogance and stupidity from our national "leadership".

We WON'T read about that in TDMN, apparently, or even see it as a blog item to comment on. Nothing to see here folks, move along.

So, I guess we will just go ahead and do nothing -- that is going to solve the problem. One of those conservative papers had a story about the fact the had we passed Clinton Care we would have saved a half trillion dollars -- passed it under Carter, something like a trillion. Under Nixon even more.

My beef is that we don't see those kind of stories.

Doing nothing is no longer an option.