North Dakota Blue Cross Wants Government To Fine You If You Don’t Have Health Insurance

Ken McCracken • November 19, 2009

North Dakota Blue Cross Blue Shield has been a target for Insurance Commissioner Adam Hamm. I think that BCBS made some mistakes it in no way justifies the jihad that Hamm’s been on against them.
But what I read in their website today really angers me.

BCBSND urges reform that will:
Eliminate coverage denials for pre-existing conditions, something we’ve long 1. supported, as long as all North Dakotans are required to have health insurance.
2. Require all North Dakotans to have health insurance coverage with sufficient penalties to assure full coverage.
3. Provide substantial subsidies for low-income North Dakotans and for older North Dakotans.
4. Pay for subsidies honestly through general tax revenues rather than by taxing the cost of health insurance.

Item two stick in my craw. Who are they to tell us that we must be forced to buy their product. If I don’t want to buy it that’s my business. Of course I should expect to face the consequences of that decision.
And who’s going to decide. How are they going to enforce this law? Are they going to fine us if we bring our kids to school without an insurance card? Are we going to have to prove we have insurance when we’re stopped at a DUI checkpoint?
Item three and four, requiring tax paid subsidies for people to buy Blue Cross products is pretty disgusting. There’s no looking out for their corporate best interests there is there?
Finally I have to question their number one priority. So somebody doesn’t have insurance coverage for whatever reason. Maybe they just moved here or maybe they were breaking the law. So they haven’t been paying in a nickel and we’re supposed to cover them the minute they sign up.
My family is fairly healthy but I have insurance coverage in case someone gets real sick. Blue Cross has made money on me every single year I’ve been signed up. Now they’ve set up an incentive to do things the wrong way and have to resort to BIG GOVERNMENT to coerce people to act in their best interest.
Blue Cross wants to take away the incentive to do things right at the same time they institute fines for doing it wrong. Talk about a bunch of screwed up jerks.
Right now the pre-existing coverage provision means that if you have coverage at a job you can transfer it to your new job with no problem. If you’re getting treatment without insurance coverage you do have to wait a year before the insurance will pay for that. That’s to keep healthy people from buying insurance only when they’re sick.
Blue Cross has enough problem with government regulators. If they wind up asking for more interference from the government they deserve what they’ll get.

Tags: North Dakota News

http://Array jimmypop

people that cannot afford healthcare already get government aid. all they have to do is apply.
sayanything-13

I got this on paper in a mailing from BCBSND and haven’t written about it yet, but I parsed through the BS pretty quickly. They’d be more than happy to sell insurance to people who have to buy it, just like the AARP and others.
http://SayAnythingBlog.com The_Whistler_ofnd

The state has put in all kinds of regulations on what you may and may not
purchase. I had a coworker that wanted to buy the single plus dependent
coverage. It turns out that BCBS was prohibited from selling her what she
wanted and could afford because her loser, drunk, estranged husband was
unemployable.

But she could take the single coverage.

So the state legislature would rather her kids didn’t have insurance I
guess.
sayanything-4124

3. Provide substantial subsidies for low-income North Dakotans and for older North Dakotans.

Substantial subsidies for older North Dakotans whether they can afford healthcare or not I assume. That leaves about 15 people in the entire state to bear the burden of paying for those elderly subsidies, considering the median age.

Ah, BCBS. We have health insurance, but because we have a pretty decent out of pocket expense, we looked at purchasing another policy to bridge that gap.

It costs too much to get it through my dh’s employer(and it costs him a ton to provide it, but provide it he does), so I called BCBS to ask them about the cost of purchasing, totally out of our pocket a policy, thinking it might be cheaper.

The very nice woman I spoke to, told me that we could not purchase our own policy, full price, out of our pocket, at all if his employer offered it, regardless of the situation or cost, even if we would spend more money on purchasing a private policy, we cannot apparently do it. Period.

She did tell me that we could purchase a private, college policy for our daughter, even if she was living at home(as long as she was a full-time student) and even though she would still fall under the covered age had he purchased insurance through his employer. What is the difference between buying a private policy for her, and buying a private family policy? We would pay more to buy the private family policy, but they apparently do not allow that.

Makes no sense. I keep forgetting to call again and see if I still get the same answer, but it just makes no sense to me, particularly now that I read they want to punish me for not buying insurance, when I am TRYING to buy insurance through them..lol
headward

I still would like somebody to point in the constitution where Congress would get these powers from. I’ve been looking but I don’t see anything about forcing people to buy insurance.

“I’m going to lobby the PSC to require that all North Dakota internet service providers set Say Anything as the default start up page for anyone going on the internet.”

Rob – Take that a step further. Make them set you as a homepage and if people don’t spend a sufficent amount of time on this site, they get fined.
sayanything-101

Why shouldn’t stoned slackers have to pay to be in the insurance pool. The should work more and stop playing Hacky Sack.
sayanything-4808

The liberals, who are constantly whenever convenient for them vociferously antibusiness and anticapitalist and even antifreedom where economics are concerned, want to close the insurance gap by legally requiring people to spend money on insurance rather than let’s say… food for instance, and are hypocritically counting on big business to back them in it and then they do, in a blatant act of rent seeking.

At what point does oxygen reach the part of their brain that sees farther than five seconds into the future?
http://sayanythingblog.com robport

I’m not surprised that a business would want the government to mandate that we buy their product.

I’m going to lobby the PSC to require that all North Dakota internet service providers set Say Anything as the default start up page for anyone going on the internet.

Because that’s fair, right?

SayAnythingBlog.com

North Dakota Blue Cross Wants Government To Fine You If You Don’t Have Health Insurance

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