Last week, I took a well-deserved vacation. As I perched on the balcony of a nice condo on a balmy October day, enjoying an amazing view of the Gulf of Mexico and people below swimming, sunning and playing, my phone started going crazy. I mean crazy.
At its heart, health insurance is a pretty simple business. Instead of running the risk of a medical situation that outstrips your ability to pay for it (and in the healthcare world, that’s a pretty common occurrence), you transfer some or most of that risk to another entity (like Blue Cross).
Blue Cross Healthcare Economist Mike Bertaut is on the road, on the job and around Louisiana. Now is your chance to follow along, as he brings the Straight Talk to you and your fellow Louisianians in our new series of videos.
A few months ago, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the American Healthcare Act (AHCA). The bill next went to the Senate, which created several of its own bills, including the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA). While these bills are not actively being debated as I write this, they are far from dead, as is the “repeal and replace” debate, which still rages.
Last week, we began trying to explain why these new “Repeal and/or Replace” healthcare bills are so prominent in the political universe and so important right now. We began that discussion with a short history lesson on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA or ACA), and now we know that a massive re-regulation and federalization of the individual health insurance market was the root of the opposition who are now trying to pass the current healthcare bills.
I’m told that in the late 1800s, a very popular form of entertainment that regular folks would pay high admission prices to see was to watch two full-sized steam trains smash into each other at 40 miles an hour. I guess we are still the same basic humans 120 years later.
