wrote in message
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On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 11:09:56 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

wrote in message
. ..
On Thu, 25 Mar 2010 01:17:37 -0700, jps wrote:

The prices are determined by the actuarial studies by the underwriters
and that is pure dollars and cents.
They increased the insurance company exposure to risk and the
insurance company is going to recover that in higher premiums.
Actually when you are talking about caps and preexisting conditions it
is not really risk at all, the worst possible scenario is already true
and the insurance company is just a medical service broker, paying the
bill, tacking on administrative cost and profit and billing the other
customers accordingly. In a macro sense this is a very simple
business. When outlay goes up, income must go up.

There's a few factors in there worth considering. Among them, the
insurance companies are dividing 30 million new customers. There's
upside in greater volume. Many of those new customers will be younger
since they're more likely to forego insurance, pushing the median age
lower and lowering actuarial risk. Outlay/customer is likely to go
down.

Since a significant number of these new "young" customers will be on
their parent's policies they do not represent any actual new revenue.
unless the parent's rate goes up.

The real savings for us, that is small participants, is when they
institute the exchange. That'll allow small companies like mine to
join much larger pools.

Let's see how that works in reality.

Well, isn't that almost always the case?

The Wall Street Journal is not sanguine about the prospects.
http://tinyurl.com/ylfftph


It's an opinion piece. They're welcome to their opinion. Doesn't make it a
fact.

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Nom=de=Plume