Younger People Blamed for Making Private Insurance Market Prices Soar by Industry's Trade Group

Sorry, Mr. Robert Zierkelbach, you have no evidence that younger people are dropping their health insurance leaving the older beached, whales to be washed up on shore.

This simply looks like a good time to drag out that excuse so that the industry can continue to make its massive profits prior to 2014 when pre-existing conditions will no longer be admissable evidence for denial of insurance.

Business
Costs soar for individual health coverage
Insurance premiums increase average of 20%, Kaiser Family Foundation report says
By Guy Boulton of the Journal Sentinel
Posted: June 22, 2010 (57) Comments

http://www.jsonline.com/business/96854979.html

".....The market for individual insurance has long been considered the most problematic in the industry, and it is the target of many of the most sweeping health care reforms recently enacted by Congress....

"Many people see the individual market as the most broken part of the insurance market," Drew Altman, president and chief executive of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said in a teleconference....

America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry's trade group, tracks premiums in the individual market and does not have information on how the recent increases compare with those of past years.

But Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for association, said the premium increases stem from higher medical costs and from younger and healthier people dropping their health insurance during the economic downturn.

People who are young and healthy basically subsidize the cost of health insurance for people who are older and sicker.

But Kaiser's Altman noted that there is not good data on whether younger and healthier people have actually dropped their coverage or on what is behind the sharp increases in premiums in the individual market....."