Yes it's true, starting next year rebate checks will be in the mail. Federal regulations issued on Nov. 22 2010 called the "Affordable care act" required health insurance companies to prove that they spent at least 80% of their collected dollars on medical care and improvement efforts.
These regulations force the health insurance marketplace to become more accountable and require that they spend more of their dollars on higher end care. This means that Americans are going to get a better value for all of their hard earned money spent on health care insurance.
Basically what these companies are doing with a large part of our consumer dollars is spending it on marketing, exec salaries, overhead and essentially just putting it their pocket. With the Affordable Care Act insurance companies will be required to spend 80 to 85% on actual medical care and quality health care improvement, instead of "administrative costs."
If they fail to comply, these insurance companies will have to provide a rebate check starting in 2012. These new rules will protect millions of Americans and some estimates are projecting that almost 9 million Americans will be eligible for rebate checks in 2012 with a value of almost 1.4 million dollars. The average rebate check will be around $164.
This federal regulation is requiring that insurance companies must publicly report how much they are spending on premium medical care, which is great information for all those consumers left in the dark for all these years. After years of input from the different states, public and stakeholders the decision has been made to make health insurance more of a fair process for consumers.
This act also requires the (NAIC) National Association of Insurance Commissioners to create uniform procedures and policies in calculating their medical loss ratio's, which is essentially how much is spent where and what part is being spent on quality medical care for the consumer and if it's not 80-85% the insurance companies will have to issue a rebate check for the difference.
Insurance companies in every state will now be responsible and held financially accountable in protecting the interests of the general public, policy holders and enrolled participants in their respective states.
It's outrageous that in some markets insurance companies spend as little as 60% on direct medical care and health care improvement. As much as 40 cents out of every dollar goes to the "administrative costs" of the health care insurance provider. So where does all this money really go you may wonder?
Timothy Jost who is a law professor at Washington and Lee University in VA says he estimates that these insurance companies spend 12% of every dollar that they get on pharmaceuticals and 31% for doctor's care, and 31% on administrative costs.
Hopefully this new regulation will force insurance companies to become more efficient and not raise premiums more than absolutely necessary and if they do then 80-85% of every dollar needs to be on actual care and not into the endless coffers of the insurance companies.
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