Lifetime Insurance Caps

Here's a good article on lifetime insurance caps.

As medical costs have risen these cap limits have remained stagnant and they need to change.

But just as important we, as consumers of medical care, need to demand transparency in medical costs. Everything; doctors visits, procedures, tests, examination gloves, alcohol swabs, everything. There are countless instances of a provider having two prices; one charged to an insurance company, and one to the guy paying out of pocket. This cycle of provider charging insurer, charging employer, charging employee with higher premiums and higher deductibles has got to stop. It's a rigged system where costs are hidden and choices are narrowed. Like the three gas stations down the street at the corner that compete for my fuel money it's time for the medical industry to join the rest of the market system and compete my health care dollars. Let the consumer be the judge of what's best for them considering services, prices, location and everything else.

I know, I know. Universal health care. I don't buy it. Costs will continue to rise, choices will diminish as will the number of docs and other health care professionals leading to a reduction in quality of care.

Focus on Health Insurance Lifetime Caps

This Washington Post article does a nice job putting some flesh on the lifetime cap issue. Some key graphs:

Statistics on how many people exceed the lifetime caps are hard to come by, but advocates note that the amount of many caps hasn't changed in decades, or at least has not kept up with health-care inflation and the sky-high cost of lifesaving new therapies, making it more likely that people will reach the limit.

and,

Three of Kerry and Chuck Fatula's four boys have hemophilia, a rare inherited bleeding disorder that prevents their blood from clotting normally. All three punched through the $1 million lifetime cap in the Pittsburgh area family's private insurance policy within a few months of one another in 2004, their mother said.

The clotting factor they take to prevent and control bleeding costs about $150,000 a month, and at various times each has been hospitalized for internal bleeding or to treat infections of the ports that allow them to take medication intravenously, Kerry Fatula said. For now, Medicaid pays medical bills for all three. But the eldest, Paul, a senior in high school who physically can do "90 percent" of what his healthy peers can, recently turned 18 and must qualify as a disabled adult to retain federal assistance, she said.

I had some personal reflections on the lifetime cap issue in a previous post here.