By Michael Bielawski
Blue Cross Blue Shield and MVP health insurance companies each are requesting that the state approve rate increases for the monthly premiums that people must pay to have health insurance.
As with recent years, the increases are substantial, and the companies are asking for ratepayers’ understanding.
“We understand the concerns individuals and small businesses have with these rising costs and will continue to work closely with stakeholders to bring solutions that will support all Vermonters,” states BCBS.
Blue Cross Blue Shield says that the average rate change for their proposal is 16.3 percent, according to the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont 2025 Vermont QHP Market Rate Filings Actuarial Memorandum, which is linked here.
Their proposal states, “Changes for specific plans range from 8.5 percent to 21.5 percent for non-loaded plans and from 39.9 percent to 44.9 percent for loaded silver plans. The range of changes is due to changes to the actuarial values, plan designs, and the new guidance on silver loading, which increases the loaded silver plans by 20.8 percent and reduces the non-loaded plans by 2.1 percent.”
MVP has made a more modest proposal for their rate hike. Their Actuarial Memorandum 2025 Vermont Small Group Exchange Filing states, “The proposed average rate increase (MVP’s revenue increase) is 9.3%, with increases ranging from 5.2% to 11.7%.”
Healthcare utilization trends “too volatile”?
The MVP document hints that there may have been unusual trends in healthcare utilization in recent years. The report states that they, “analyzed historical medical utilization trends for its VT block of business and determined that the data has been too volatile in recent years to use for medical utilization trend purposes. MVP attributes this volatility to the significant membership growth for this block of business and COVID-19.”
The Blue Cross Blue Shield report similarly indicates that there are unexpected changes in healthcare utilization at play.
“In Vermont, and nationally, health care costs continue to grow year after year at a faster pace than many other economic indexes. Increases in the volume of services along with the costs of these services have put pressure on our member and group customers’ finances,” it states.
According to KFF, a health news and data site, medical expenses continue to be one of the top burdens on Americans’ expenses.
Their report states, “About four in ten adults (41%) in the United States—and about six in ten (57%) of those with household incomes below $40,000—have some level of medical debt, owing an estimated $195 billion or more in total. Many adults who report medical debt cite costs associated with emergency care (50%) and hospitalizations (35%) as sources of unpaid bills. Affording this care may be especially challenging for the large number of adults who are uninsured or underinsured.”
Charity Care a better alternative?
It is currently not a legal requirement that individuals have health insurance, though it is often packaged with many employment offerings. The law is that if someone does not have health insurance, they must be offered income-adjusted fees for essential services from healthcare providers that receive public funds. This is more commonly known as Charity Care.
According to a report at VeryWellHealth.com, “Charity care, also commonly referred to as uncompensated health care, is health care provided for free, or at a reduced cost, to people with limited income who would otherwise be unable to pay for their treatment.”
According to the KFF report, Charity Care represents a small percentage of overall healthcare budgets.
The report states, “Half of all hospitals reported that charity care costs represented 1.4% or less of their operating expenses in 2020, though the level of charity care varied substantially across facilities.”
The author is a writer for the Vermont Daily Chronicle
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Categories: Health Care, State Government
“may have been unusual trends in healthcare utilization in recent years”
Translation… Those shots you took, yeah they made everyone’s health suck and not only do those people suffer but the everyone including those who decided not to partake in a medical experiment known to be damaging or even deadly have to pay too.
Medical Industrial Complex. Funny that VT was the pioneer for Gov funded healthcare and here we are just a decade later with out of control spending, rising consumer cost, families in debt (enslaved) to the medical companies, and have been locked in our houses and told to take shots like dogs.
I wish that I could say that I didn’t say this all would happen back when VT was so high on their horse to make healthcare a government run institution but I can’t.
How many years in a row is this now with double-digit rate increases? That’s got to be about 150% increase in premiums since the Affordable Care Act was passed.
Couldn’t have anything to do with Covid -19 “Vaccinations”?
Turbo cancers? Heart Problems?
We could reduce healthcare costs dramatically, increase pay for those in the field and increase the quality of service. It’s a rub gold berg situation, medicine is more about liability, and they don’t want you healthy, they can’t make as much money.
Marxists ruin everything. This is but one of those things.
Think about the medical costs due to drug abuse alone. Drug use which the state promotes and does absolutely nothing to curb.
We have one of the highest per capita of babies born addicted to hard core drugs.
What’s that alone. $1million dollars extra for the kid aside from pain and suffering?
Mothers should be in jail for this. It’s criminal.
Addressing just our drug, alcohol situation could do wonders for everyone.
There is no competition, all the Blue Cross Blues shields are also under one holding company. There is zero incentive to do a better job. Lobbyists have their way with our medical system, getting fat contracts for drugs that cost the entire system too much.
Don’t even start on the drugs they give our children, the psychological waste land. That is a scam of such epic proportions. Talk with any pharmacist, they can spot people who are addicted to legal drugs that are killing them and making people more miserable a mile away.
The system is rigged. The system doesn’t work for the people.
There is no free market in the medical field.
This is why we have such a disastrous system. Ask anyone who uses it.
The people in the system and generally good.
They completely lied to us about Covid.
Suddenly there was NO flu across the entire united states for 2 years?
They lied about the masks.
They lied about the distancing.
They killed people in NY hospitals.
They would not listen to science.
They would fire any doctor who said anything different.
They made BILLIONS of dollars off of killing people and drugging them with experimental vaccines that have done way more harm than good.
They closed down businesses because of a “health emergency”
3 countries in africa refused to take the directions of the WHO
Those three countries “lost” their leaders, all killed, coincidentally of course.
The Drug companies funded ALL the tv programs for 2+ years.
sponsored by Pfizer….
Killed by Pfizer
Propaganda by Pfizer
This is but a taste of why, how, and where our medical system is not about medicine but about powerful lobbyists ransacking humanity. Dont’ for a moment think everything else is kosher.
take notice/// one of our tel//// lie//// vision media hacks want to become a senator/// this was a massive media cover up/// big pharma spent millions of dollars on ads for the kill shot on tel/// lie/// vision///
hey hey pfizer phil how many vermonters did you kill///
They shall reap what they sow. Distract, deceive and destroy – that is what they did and do every day. Many generations will be dealing with the fallout and people are dropping like flies everyday. Take heed, they are lock and loaded with the next coof and kill shots. The Biden signed the WHO agreement – get ready!
“Changes for specific plans range from 8.5 percent to 21.5 percent for non-loaded plans and from 39.9 percent to 44.9 percent for loaded silver plans. The range of changes is due to changes to the actuarial values, plan designs, and the new guidance on silver loading, which increases the loaded silver plans by 20.8 percent and reduces the non-loaded plans by 2.1 percent.”
“The proposed average rate increase (MVP’s revenue increase) is 9.3%, with increases ranging from 5.2% to 11.7%.”
Oh. Okay. Here we go again. Let’s see now. Education costs were originally projected to increase 20% – 40%. Then the AOE and local boards sharpened their pencils and ‘cut’ the initial proposed increases by more than 50%… down to 13.4%. Thank goodness we have conservative legislators. They ‘cut’ the budget by 50%. And, oh, never mind that last year’s budget was already billions of $$s (with a ‘b’) higher than pre-pandemic budgets.
And now the circle game begins anew. Choose your poison. The final healthcare increases approved by ‘the State’ will be perceived (presented to voters) as heroic budget cuts benefiting taxpayers and premium payers alike. But they will still be significantly higher than they were in the past – pre-Covid.
How convenient these pandemics are for our legislators and the special interest groups enabling them. They don’t care that costs are increasing. They raise their salaries when it suits them. And they all have ‘defined benefit’ retirement programs… as opposed to ‘defined contribution’ programs like the average worker has. In a ‘defined benefit’ program, the ‘benefit’ is ‘defined’ (i.e., guaranteed), regardless of its future cost. While the rest of us contend with the standard investment disclaimer – ‘past investment performance is not a guaranty of future results’.
The proof in the pudding? Just count the number of comments by our legislators here on VDC explaining the errors in the above assertions. I’ve written directly to my legislators in the House and the Senate, asking for their position on various issues. And their response, to date – crickets.
Here we go again.
if we interviewed the legislators, kinda like Rob did with his video clip, we’d find the following:
They didn’t write anything
They don’t know any of what is in any bill
They haven’t read any of it.
They can’t explain it.
They can’t talk intelligently about anything
You might get a really good word salad, aka sophistry, aka B.S
They were told they need to vote for things, so they do it.
Ask they why they voted for it/approved it. Ask them who told you to vote for this.
We don’t need to argue with any of them, it’s like wrestling with a pig in mud. The pig loves it and you come out covered in……
Just shine some light on them, ask them simple questions.
Show them for who they really are, puppets for lobbyists
Pimps for the New World Order
Let the public see them, for who they truly are.
Just remember the ultimate goal is power. How do you get power? Control the money…..nuff said.
of course insurance is going up – between all the covid vaccine injuries & all the freeloaders & illegals that we the working class have to pay for it’s inevitable. No one should be shocked by this 🙁
The major problem with health insurance in Vermont is that hospital get 25 cents on the dollar for seeing Medicaid and Medicare patients which account for 75 percent of the patients in Bennington! Five percent pay nothing and the remaining 20 percent, Blue Cross patients pay through the nose to cover some of the losses from the previous insurances! Old Bernie wanted Medicare for all, hospitals would go bankrupt in a year, crazy Senator, not mine for sure! The Federal government must increase their payments !
now i know why my private health insurance went up fourteen hundred dollars this year/// that was double the cola increase from mine and my wife social security increase///
Health insurance is a worthless product. People would be better off to save or invest the insurance money and use it when health care is needed. Health care has become so expensive that even with insurance you still get a ridiculous charge if you don’t have the gold plan like teachers. Charging different rate to people on medicaid , medicare and private pay creates discrimination. Rates should be fair and in line with the rest of the economy. School budgets went up because of the increase in health care costs, which they claimed they had no control over. Not true. There are less expensive plans. Health care costs are unsustainable.