There’s a big difference between going without car insurance and going without health insurance. One is illegal and punishable by impounding of auto and revocation of license. Not to mention inability to renew registration, renew license, get inspections etc. On the other hand, its perfectly legal to have no health insurance.
I have customers that have no health insurance and use the emergency room as needed, but keep up on their auto insurance payments.
surprise, surprise. I would have never guessed the hospitals would have figured out a way to shift the costs to auto insurers. Next thing you know they will be shifting costs to the Gen Liab policies in every case they can. Ooops they already figured that out to. Oh well.
Used to be you could pretty much trust the Hospital bills as being inviolate. Not any longer. Here’s a thought, if you’re not comfortable with the health insurers’ attempts to pay a lower amount than your bill, then lower your bills to more respectible levels!
And that doesn’t even really consider the med pay only claims for HO policies and the like. It’s amazing how much is paid just because it would cost too much to fight it. I don’t blame the hospitals. They need to make more than pennies on the dollar but any which way you slice it, we all end up paying for it. Watch those premiums rise.
Medicare is SECONDARY payor….general liability and auto are usually PRIMARY. With the new MMSEA in place, you will see hospitals sending bills more to the auto carriers and GL carriers because that’s where they should be going before they go to Medicare. It sucks, but federal trumps state and private every time.
I’m a CA agent and have been an agent since ’68…and I’ll bet I can count on both hands all the Med Pay HO claims I’ve seen. All were ER type incidents turned in to us after the hospital ever knew there was some form of coverage. Normally they arose because a neighbor said, “You might talk to your insurance agent about that!” I have no idea if hospitals are getting wise to the Med Pay coverage and are questioning patients as to if the injury occurred on someone else’s property, etc. Doubt it…but the typical HO $1000 benefit isn’t going to make a dent in any hospital’s accts. receivables.
With the new healthcare plan, you can expect that there will be tremendous cost shifting to WC plans and the Section 111 self reporting on Auto, GL and every other casuatly plan will be increased exponentially as more and more people are forced onto state Medicaid plans and then transferred to Medicare. The entire insurance industry will see admin costs rise for compliance and that will drive insurance premiums upward. We have indeded entered the twilight zone courtesy of the United States Congress.
I a claims supervisor and we have already seen a rise in cost in compliance. The worse thing right now is the Sec 111 keeps changing and CMS doesn’t even have a handle on what they are doing. Computer programming has had to be changed, etc. WE pretty much need a full time person just to deal with compliance.
I worked in a personal injury firm. The only reason those personal injury lawyers can make a living is because they disguise their fees in the form of a medical bill. The hospitals overstate their medical bills to the insurance companies. Then the hospital and the lawyer “negotiates” so that the hospital takes a reduced fee leaving the remainder to be split among the lawyer & claimant.
The insurance company doesn’t care because they just raise their rates to the insured.
I doubt that insurance companies don’t care about cost as they just pass them through. There is a tipping point where insurance becomes too expensive and the market contracts in relation to that point. I have heard this argument before during the Obamacare debate. One need only ask Wellpoint in CA if raising rates has no consequences. In that case the insurer rate increase was used to demagouge the issue and obscure the reality of a situation where increasing provider costs and a shrinking risk pool created the need for the increase. Greed was not the need.
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There’s a big difference between going without car insurance and going without health insurance. One is illegal and punishable by impounding of auto and revocation of license. Not to mention inability to renew registration, renew license, get inspections etc. On the other hand, its perfectly legal to have no health insurance.
I have customers that have no health insurance and use the emergency room as needed, but keep up on their auto insurance payments.
surprise, surprise. I would have never guessed the hospitals would have figured out a way to shift the costs to auto insurers. Next thing you know they will be shifting costs to the Gen Liab policies in every case they can. Ooops they already figured that out to. Oh well.
Used to be you could pretty much trust the Hospital bills as being inviolate. Not any longer. Here’s a thought, if you’re not comfortable with the health insurers’ attempts to pay a lower amount than your bill, then lower your bills to more respectible levels!
And that doesn’t even really consider the med pay only claims for HO policies and the like. It’s amazing how much is paid just because it would cost too much to fight it. I don’t blame the hospitals. They need to make more than pennies on the dollar but any which way you slice it, we all end up paying for it. Watch those premiums rise.
Medicare is SECONDARY payor….general liability and auto are usually PRIMARY. With the new MMSEA in place, you will see hospitals sending bills more to the auto carriers and GL carriers because that’s where they should be going before they go to Medicare. It sucks, but federal trumps state and private every time.
I’m a CA agent and have been an agent since ’68…and I’ll bet I can count on both hands all the Med Pay HO claims I’ve seen. All were ER type incidents turned in to us after the hospital ever knew there was some form of coverage. Normally they arose because a neighbor said, “You might talk to your insurance agent about that!” I have no idea if hospitals are getting wise to the Med Pay coverage and are questioning patients as to if the injury occurred on someone else’s property, etc. Doubt it…but the typical HO $1000 benefit isn’t going to make a dent in any hospital’s accts. receivables.
With the new healthcare plan, you can expect that there will be tremendous cost shifting to WC plans and the Section 111 self reporting on Auto, GL and every other casuatly plan will be increased exponentially as more and more people are forced onto state Medicaid plans and then transferred to Medicare. The entire insurance industry will see admin costs rise for compliance and that will drive insurance premiums upward. We have indeded entered the twilight zone courtesy of the United States Congress.
I a claims supervisor and we have already seen a rise in cost in compliance. The worse thing right now is the Sec 111 keeps changing and CMS doesn’t even have a handle on what they are doing. Computer programming has had to be changed, etc. WE pretty much need a full time person just to deal with compliance.
I worked in a personal injury firm. The only reason those personal injury lawyers can make a living is because they disguise their fees in the form of a medical bill. The hospitals overstate their medical bills to the insurance companies. Then the hospital and the lawyer “negotiates” so that the hospital takes a reduced fee leaving the remainder to be split among the lawyer & claimant.
The insurance company doesn’t care because they just raise their rates to the insured.
I doubt that insurance companies don’t care about cost as they just pass them through. There is a tipping point where insurance becomes too expensive and the market contracts in relation to that point. I have heard this argument before during the Obamacare debate. One need only ask Wellpoint in CA if raising rates has no consequences. In that case the insurer rate increase was used to demagouge the issue and obscure the reality of a situation where increasing provider costs and a shrinking risk pool created the need for the increase. Greed was not the need.