Pic Of The Moment: Today's Big Number

[EarlG]

U.S. health insurers to pay $330 million in premium rebates

Follow @demunderground

[onehandle]

1. Benghazi!

Too soon?

[riqster]

2. Sadly, some DUers think that is a rotten number.

Because it's not pure enough.

I say, hooray for progress, and congrats to Obama.

[freshwest]

5. +1

[trusty elf]

3. THATS' WELLTH REDISTRIBULATION ! ! ! !

[IMG][/IMG]

[freshwest]

4. Haha! Good add to that hateful guy in the pic. Expected flames to come out of his mouth...

[geardaddy]

6. No rebate for me

but my premiums went down $250!

[blackspade]

7. The GOP is hatin'

[Botany]

8. But what about those IRS emails??????

[genxlib]

9. I see a larger meaning here

The money is great news. But in the gaping maw of health care spending, it is a relatively small amount.

For me the bigger picture is about future cost increases. If the insurers are returning money then it means they are spending less than their legal ratio. The end result is that threre will be no justification for future rate increases.

It is difficult to project this across the whole industry because there will be variability between insurers and regions. However, I take it as a goid sign that there will be limited upward pressure on rates.

In the big picture, controlling the rate of growth of health care spending is huge and we have already started to see it level off.

[IronLionZion]

10. Single Payer!!11!!11!!!!

[Eric J in MN]

11. Al Franken was one of the Senators most responsible

...for this aspect of Obamacare (medical loss ratio and rebates when it's not met.)

[SleeplessinSoCal]

14. Al had better get re-elected.

I'll bet he can start speaking in the media if he gets re-elected. And he is so worth hearing.

Looking good!

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/main/al-franken/

[MADem]

12. All together now.......THANKS a LOT, OBAMA!!!!!!!!

[valerief]

13. That's like one medical insurance company CEO's annual salary. nt

[Cha]

15. "Hate to disappoint naysayers but New England Journal of Medicine is.. "..

Randy Prine @randyprine Follow

Hate to disappoint naysayers but New England Journal of Medicine is the source http://www.nejm.org/action/showImage?doi=10.1056%2FNEJMhpr1405667&iid=f03 …

9:35 AM - 25 Jul 2014
197 Retweets 113 favorites

TOD

Mahalo EarlG!

[bearssoapbox]

16. Good news for Americans.

Bad news for republicans.

[flamingdem]

17. wooot t t t t t t

[EvolveOrConvolve]

18. It's a small step in the right direction, but it's not really a big number

At $330 million, it's bout $1 per American. And with total expenditures of $2.7 billion dollars* on health care, it's about 0.012% of the total cost of health care. It's a tiny, statistically meaningless number. Yes, it's great that more people are insured, but it's appalling that our health care systems continue to have profit as their primary mission.

To put it in perspective: I've seem estimates that a single payer system would reduce the cost of health care by up to 20%, a potential saving per American of about $1,500 per year. Very few so called fiscal "conservatives" will admit that nationalizing health care is the most cost effective solution.

* Gov't breakdown of health care costs in 2012: http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/NationalHealthExpendData/downloads/highlights.pdf

[whatacountry09]

19. GOT MY CHECK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yup... I got my check. It's for $10.12. And I paid around $350 a month. What a joke.