Menu
Under the health care reform children under 19 can not be denied or pre x on health insurance. This law is now in place and the carriers have developed strategies on the law.
The first thing the carriers have done is completely with drawn from the stand alone children’s policy. So now in this country you are unable to buy a stand alone health insurance policy for your child. The carriers were very concerned that parents would game the insurance market. This means that a parent might wait to take out a health insurance policy on the child until they need it. Since the Government would not address this issue the carriers just pulled out of that market.
So the only way to insure a child in the private market is for a parent to be on the plan also. This has created some unique situations. The carriers will except the entire family but they now are rating the children up 200% for any on going health conditions. This strategy is making the health insurance unaffordable for most family that have children with medical conditions. A family of 4 that should run around $400 a month now is over $800 if they have children with major medical conditions.
From the insurance carrier stand point even with the rate increase they will still lose money. Any child needing major health care is going to incur much more than the annual premium in claims. If a family is paying $9,000 a year in premium plus the deductible but they incur $25,000 in claims the insurance company is going to lose. So then how long will the carriers be able to sustain writing those policies.
This is a very complicated situation that the health care reform has caused.
