Every Friday, I look forward to the Georgia Public Policy Foundation's "Friday Facts". Today's included a quotation from GA state senator Eric Johnson, who made a great statement about school choice:
"Right now, depending on your ZIP code, you’re told where to go to school. We don’t deliver health care that way. We don’t say if you live in Fulton County you have to go to Grady [Hospital]. We don’t say if you live in Fulton you have to go to Georgia State University. We don’t tell people with food stamps they have to spend them at Kroger. But we say that if you live in this neighborhood you go to this school unless you’re wealthy enough to afford private school.”
Well, ok: the state does not tell you what hospital to go to. However, if you're a small business (usually defined as up to 50 full-time employees), the state might tell you what health insurance to get according to your ZIP code. It's called small-group reform, and it washed over states in the early 1990s.
I've written about the failure of California's small-group reform, which resulted in fewer insured Californians in small businesses and professional associations. The reform compelled private health insurers to bundle small businesses into no more than nine regions, designed by ZIP code, and forced them to offer the same plans at the same rates, largely irrespective of each employer's risks, within the regions. Of course, premiums went up dramatically.
Talking about small-group health insurance, I received a truly idiotic letter from my health insurer today. I suppose all the carriers are pretty much the same with respect to paperwork, but this letter was a howler. In order not to discriminate, I'll call the carrier "CignAetnAnthem Blue Net".
The letter seeks to determine whether I am eligible for Medicare, demanding the following: "Please indicate the reason(s) you are eligible for Medicare benefits: Age 65 or older?"
In order for me to be at least 65, I would have had to be born in 1944. Rest assured, I was born many years later. Indeed, had I forgotten this fact, CignAetnaAnthem Blue Net helpfully typed my birthdate and year at the top of the letter!
And then they ask me how old I am: Incredible!
But I can't really blame them: It's the Government that has fragmented our access to health insurance, sentencing us to different ghettos: Medicare, Medicaid, individual health insurance, small-group health insurance, large-group health insurance, self-insured (ERISA-regulated) jumbo health benefits, etc.
The Government needs to stop imposing this fragmentation and allow every American family to choose its own portable & guaranteed-renewable health policy.
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