Seriously. I saw this on the front page, courtesy of mcjoan:
- How do you enforce the 90 percent rule? The idea here, which Rockefeller has been pushing for a while, is to require that all insurers show a "medical-loss ratio" of at least 90 percent--that is, to make sure they spend at least 90 cents of every dollar in premiums on actual patient care. The good plans do this already--the not-so-good ones, not so much. But the regulation is meaningless if you can't enforce it. And, lord knows, insurance companies know how to get around regulations.
And it struck me as a bigger question than an answer. If we are spending $17,000 per year for our families' insurance right now, what is stopping them from adjusting our new rates to reflect the same profit they already make (OR FOR EVEN MORE?). IOW: All they have to do is raise our rates to 20 grand, 30 grand or whatever they want and they make the same profit or more with that 10%.
That seems like meaningless reform.
I know this ain't much of a diary but please explain to me how a 90% rule is anything but a big fat ZERO % solution and 100% useless?