WSHIP Is a Failure

Let's not have any illusions about WSHIP, the Washington State Health Insurance Pool.

WSHIP was created to satisfy the health insurance industry, not to help the sick people that the private insurance companies were whining about having to insure.

WSHIP is, in my opinion, a failure, and now I have the numbers to prove my point.

My income (from Social Security disability and child support) is only about $2,600/month, I pay more than $700 a month for my health insurance premium through WSHIP. The premiums are determined by age, go up every year or two across the board, and are not prorated by income.

(In case you wonder how I manage to make ends meet, the short answer is, I don't. I'm following the fine example set by our federal government and living on borrowed money. Is this strategy recommended? Of course not, but it's the only one I've got.)

Because the premiums are so high, most of the people this plan was supposedly designed to insure cannot afford it, and many of them are without health insurance.

In 2005, the latest year for which WSHIP has statistics, 6,334 sick people were rejected for individual health insurance coverage by private companies. But only 972 of them enrolled in WSHIP. That's only 15 percent.

I'd call that a failure.

WSHIP surveys these folks, so Michael Arnis, a senior health policy advisor in the Insurance Commissioner's Office and a member of the WSHIP board, was able to tell me that cost was the reason most people gave for not enrolling in WSHIP.

Of those who did not enoll in WSHIP, about two-third eventually found other insurance coverage, and about 1,800 people remained uninsured. These are the sickest people in the state of Washington, and the ones with the most expensive health-care needs, and they have been left to fend for themselves without insurance.

Of course, they can always apply for charity care! More on the nightmare of charity care in the next few days. In the meantime, read about how Harborview Medicare Center treats the people who dare to ask for charity care--it pulls their credit reports. I call that intimidation.

Read: Hospital News

@ Jeanne Sather 2007.

Comments

[Leopold]

Everybody should have affordable health insurance.

[Jeanne]

Leopold--thank you. I certainly think so.
Jeanne