The Demand for Healthcare Reform

Healthcare reform is top on the list of many voters’ minds this election year. With businesses dropping more and more individuals from their employee healthcare plan and only 60 percent of businesses offering healthcare insurance, the need for some kind of insurance backing for the US public is growing.

Insurance companies are coming to realize a number of truths about the nation’s 47 million uninsured. First, they’ve discovered that this isn’t as high risk a population as once thought, according to the Wall Street Journal. In fact, 85 percent of these individuals are employed and nearly all have worked in the last year. They are also young people—most between the ages of 28 and 34. Nearly three fourths say they their health is excellent or very good. More than two thirds have a college education, at least to some degree, and most are middle class.

Given the stagnant nature of sales to large employers, selling insurance to this population is starting to look better and better. Profit pools to corporation-funded health plans are going down in the face of high costs. This means that the greatest source of future growth in selling healthcare insurance policies has shifted to the individual. Legislation in at least two states is planning to use private insurance carriers to provide subsidized healthcare policies to individuals.

Recently, insurers have been practicing the selling of private insurance plans to seniors in the Medicare Advantage Plans sold directly to those over the age of 65. Carriers are worried, however, about servicing so many more plans if changes are made to the system.